Magic of Monkey Island Book 2: The Song of Monkey Island.
by Aletheia
Summary: Sequel to Mask. A sinister new enemy has emerged to destroy the Threepwoods.
1. Prologue

The Song of Monkey Island

Prologue

* * *

  
Deep within the Caribbean, Monkey Island.....

Not such an unusual island, when you think about it. It had a large central mountain range covered in jungle, with a tiny river bisecting it–-it had miles of coastline-–it had its share of wildlife in the form of (of course) monkeys. And two castaways, but more about them later.

It also had a small shrine to some long-forgotten monkey-god-–an enormous head, half buried in the sand, with mammothine ears to match. Its mouth was wide open, nearly splitting its stone skull in two, and its stone tongue lolled out, touching the ground. Even rows of stone teeth completed the effect.

For two days now, that gaping mouth had been singing.

It carolled out a single-note song...sometimes low, sometimes loudly...so deep and powerfully that the earth trembled. It vibrated in the very bones of the island–in ways, it was the island, singing a low, low song as old as the Caribbean. The song swelled and ebbed just as ceaselessly as the transparent waters, and every being of the island was just as attuned to it. The song was just as much a part of them now as it was part of the island.

A tiny, jarring disturbance to the flow of the single-note song came stumping dejectedly along the coastline. His name was Horace. His teeth were clenched in half-conscious resistance to the tidal-pull of the deep music, but he was nonetheless making his meandering way towards the Monkey Head. He was a sad sight: His once-proud velvet overcoat was sand-covered rags, with a double-breasted grass-stain to match. The long red-gold locks that had been his pride and joy were burned off raggedly and what remained of them was nearly hopelessly wind-tangled. He was the picture of pitiful dejection as he made his way along, feeling the song resonate in his very bones, but still trying to deny the powerful lure it held for him. Up ahead he saw, like a condemned man his gallows, the spit of land upon which rested the Monkey Head.

Just then, another man struggled out of the thick jungle and into full daylight, blinking like an owl. Not such a bad comparison, for he was bent nearly double, with a prominent and beaky nose and tiny, searching black eyes. His hair might have been black, though since he was tangled in every jungle plant known to monkey, it was impossible to tell.

Eyes accustomed to light, he squinted at Horace and demanded, "Who're you?"

Horace gathered up the remains of his dignity and stood up as tall as he could. "I am Deadeyes, Captain of General LeChuck's navy."

"You? Ha!"

That wasn't quite the reaction Horace had been expecting. "I am!"

"Oh, yeah.." derisive snort "..like LeChuck would give anyone that much power. I oughta know." The squat figure came lumbering up in a deceptively fast gait. "Look, I know. LeChuck never shares his power with anyone."

Surprised despite the tremble of the song in his veins, Horace frowned suspiciously at the man. "And just how do you know?"

"Because I used to be LeChuck's right-hand man." The grating tone wasn't precisely proud of this revelation, but it wasn't ashamed of it, either. "The name's Largo. Largo LaGrande."

Another deep swell of song....so powerful and low that it set him trembling. Horace temporarily forgot how to breathe. The Singer in the Monkey Head put more feeling into a single note than most singers could express in an entire song. But when he looked up, he saw that Largo seemed equally shaken.

"You hear it, too?" He instinctively kept his voice to a whisper.

Horace actually looked ashen as he nodded.

From that instant, there was no more need for words. The two turned as one and walked, unwillingly, to the Monkey Head.

At the actual Mouth, both of them stopped. They weren't especially brave men, and they sensed instinctively that to go in was to see something that neither wanted to see. But the Song was flowing like tidal currents around their feet now...there was no resisting. Down into the darkness they went.

Deep inside, it was all warm darkness–a real mouth, or possibly a womb. They couldn't see, but the Song tugged at their feet, insistent as a puppy, drawing them deeper in, until they could see their own hands again and realized that they were coming upon a place which glowed faintly, dull red. It reminded them of nothing quite so much as a large heart, slowly beating out the single-note Song.

As they crept tremblingly closer, it moved. Physically pulsed. The two luckless castaways scrabbled backwards until their backs encountered a stone wall, and there they stayed as some.....thing....erupted from the rock floor. With a liquid slarp of molten stone on molten stone, it burst into sight from the blackened rock around it, throwing its 'head' back and its 'arms' out to each side, spraying a thin splash of red magma around it. For an instant it remained motionless, gleaming wetly, and Horace and Largo had the sudden impression that they had just witnessed the birth of something terrible.

Then the figure shook itself, sending droplets of the magma everywhere. It paused, then settled and reformed into a humanoid figure, though it remained entirely molten rock within the form. It turned and rested its glowing yellow eyes at the two figures on the cave floor.

Horace blanched. "No.... No. You're dead," said Largo faintly.

LeChuck was standing in the center of the ragged-edged pool of molten rock.   


* * *

Tension built–neither remembered to breathe. But then, to their extreme disgruntlement, the enormous figure started laughing. It covered its stomach with its arms and roaring with amusement for several minutes–long enough for Horace and Largo to forget their fright and actually become annoyed with the lava-being who copied human features and mannerisms.

"Well then, who are ya?" snapped out Largo.

The lava-beast regarded them piercingly. "Who am I? I am the arcane power behind this island," he boomed out in a grainy baritone. "I am Monkey Island personified!"

Horace and Largo waited in puzzled silence. The lava figure did something that might have been a sigh. "I am Big Whoop!" it finally announced.

"Big Whoop?!" chorused the two.

"None other." The figure drew itself up tall and looked faintly gratified.

"But you're not alive!" cried Largo.

"But then why do you look like General LeChuck?" ventured Horace at the same moment.

Big Whoop looked directly at LaGrande, who shivered at whatever he saw in those yellow eyes. "All magic is alive. Ask anyone who practices voodoo, and they will tell you that they never 'own' any of their power. They make bargains with it, persuade it. Those who try to 'use' magic will eventually be consumed by it. It steals their lives, their personalities, their very souls."

Largo looked blank, but Horace, who had passed through Big Whoop, felt the truth in that statement in his heart and soul. Big Whoop continued.

"I _am_ magic. I was 'used' for many years, lastly by LeChuck, but first by many, many others. And I stole parts of their souls as my price. I have memories, a personality, feelings. I can be hurt–and I _was_ hurt!" Big Whoop's tone shifted to something close to a wail. The cave walls trembled with his anger. "A great shining thing came into me and when I tried to take it, it _hurt_ me! And I am going to _get _that thing that hurt me!"

The creature threw back its head and opened its molten mouth, not to shriek, but to sing. It sang out a song that was tangled chaos, eight- and ten-part harmonies that held true for fleeting instants, breathtakingly beautiful, and then clashed into unbearable chords. Bits of small rock fell from the ceiling, pelting the two pirates (who were rooted to the spot by the force of the song). The earth shook with a bass rumble, adding yet another dimension to the harmonics.

Then, out of the pool of lava, skeletal figures staggered up, preserved intact somehow within the molten rock. Some of them even wore pirate clothes and carried swords. Eyes alight with a yellow glow, they arrayed themselves in ranks before Big Whoop and the two castaways.

Nor was this all. From the mouth of the cave, and even out of the sea, skeletons were coming to life. They staggered up, got to their bony feet, walked without concern across the ocean floor, Monkey Island their ultimate destination. The inner cave was beginning to fill with them before Big Whoop faded back into the one-note Song, which seemed inaudible compared to the earlier flood of music. 

The earth stilled. The two pirates discovered that they could still breathe.

"What was that?" Horace gasped.

"That is the Song of Calling," responded Big Whoop, looking pleased. "With this song, I call in all who have passed through me, living or dead–or undead" he added, gesturing at the skeletons. "When my army is assembled, I will have my revenge on the ones who hurt me."

He turned to the skeletons. "Go out and find for me a woman who wears an item of magic called the Necromancer's Amulet," he ordered. "When you find her, bring her to me alive...I mean to watch her suffer before she dies. Her name is Chariset Threepwood."

Something in his tone chilled Horace to the marrow, even as the skeletons marched out to carry out the order. He had no love for his former Captain, but neither did he want to watch her tortured because of a piece of molten lava's temper tantrum.

Big Whoop turned around "And as for you two, I have a special mission LeChuck left just for you....."

Horace and Largo both swallowed hard.

"I want to seek out and bring back here to me Guybrush and Elaine Threepwood. The three who defied me together will die together. Now listen..."

The plan was worthy of LeChuck's evil genius, but for some reason the prospect of immediate success only made Horace feel small and alone as Big Whoop detailed his evil intentions. For the first time (but not the last), he began to wonder what exactly he and Largo had unleashed upon the Caribbean.   



	2. New Situations and a Green Parrot

The Song of Monkey Island

Chapter 1: New Situations and a Green Parrot

* * *

Guybrush Threepwood is, as usual, in hot water.

The water is shortly to get much hotter, because we find our hero tied to a post in the center of the camp of the vicious cannibal tribe, the Visshywahoos. Beneath his feet is a pile of VERY dry firewood and the cannibal chief just happens to have a lighted torch in hand. It is late night, and the leaping shadows from the fire and the torches gave the entire scene a surreal quality.

Back to the story: The aforementioned cannibal chief leans in close, garishly painted face cast in odd relief from the fire. "Mr. Threepwood...as you well know, you have been caught trying to steal our most precious relic, the Golden Spear of Tiky-wiky. Therefore, we have decided you shall be sacrificed to the Fire Goddesses of Alde--unless you know the one phrase which will call forth the rain and save your life, not so incidentally winning you our eternal devotion and loyalty."

Our hero, inches away from flaming death, nonetheless looks cool and composed.

"You just said all that half an hour ago! Why do you keep repeating yourself like that?"

"Ahh..well...um...because THEY don't know that."

"'They' don't know that...." Guybrush repeats slowly, his tone implying that he is humoring a blithering idiot. He adds with forced brightness, "Oh...well, of course. Can't very well leave 'them' in the dark now, can we?"

The chief senses that he is being mocked but presses on. "So, what do you have to say for yourself?"

"I say...." Guybrush ponders this for a while, stretching the word out to buy time. "I say...LOOK BEHIND YOU! A THREE-HEADED MONKEY!"

"What? Where??" The chief whips around. Nothing. Enraged, he turns back to Guybrush--but Guybrush is not there. The coils of rope hang slack and empty around the post. Not a leaf in the bushes moves to announce whence the clever captive has gone.

"Curse that Threepwood!" yells the cannibal chief.

Guybrush hears that and laughs as he races silently through the woods, the Spear of Tiky-wiky a heavy lump in his voluminous pocket.

Then, suddenly, a red-haired apparition appears before him out of the forest! Before he can react, the creature pins him with a cold blue glare and says-   


* * *

"Guybrush!" Elaine's tone was sufficient to pop his daydream like a soap bubble on a needle. The mighty pirate shook his head clear of his interesting daydream world and tried to focus on the reality, giving Elaine a sheepish grin and saying "Sorry...I guess I was woolgathering." She smiled enigmatically but said nothing in reply, and he changed his focus to the ocean below.

They were standing on the parapets of the fort, watching a strange parade go by. These were the 5th annual Plunder Island Pride Days, which were commemorated by fireworks, a show at the Long John Silver Center for the Performing Arts, and all started-off by an island-wide parade. Puerto Pollo had no long streets, or horses to pull floats, for that matter, so the entire parade was done on the ocean, and the parade route encircled the island. The 'floats' _were_ a tad bit more aptly named this way--decorated boats either self-powered or drawn by smaller rowboats. The Plunder Pride Parade--the entire weekend, in fact--was a bigger draw than Guybrush would ever have supposed--the smallish island was inhabited by denizens from all parts of the Caribbean. Some even had floats themselves. The docks and all the available hotels were crowded with the newcomers, which had some people delighted, such as Guybrush's friends at the Barbery Coast, while others were less than pleased. There was a lot of risk in packing this many people into close quarters.

Speaking of the Barbery Coast trio, their float was coming into view just at that moment. They had a small houseboat made to look like an extraordinarily hairy man (or woman...the face could not be seen). Bill and van Helgen perched on top of this mountain of coiffure, snipping off small pieces of hair and waving all the while, while Haggis, notwithstanding the hot morning sun, towed the whole contraption with a small rowboat. He paused to wave to the two on the fort, who smiled and waved back.

"That reminds me," Elaine muttered, "I need a haircut."

Since Elaine was Governor, it was her privilege to watch the entire parade before she entered her own float. Their own conveyance was right on time, a small boat designed to look like a covered horse-drawn carriage came in to the fort's private dock and was made fast. From here on out, the Governor and her husband were just as much on parade as the rest of the floats.

Elaine put on a professional smile and began her descent to the ground level. Guybrush turned to follow, but a green shape in the corner of his vision caught his eye, and he paused.

A green parrot sat calmly on the parapet, looking bright-eyed and unafraid. He approached it slowly, wondering why it was so tame--and then he saw the note it was clutching in one clawed foot. Carefully he picked the note up and unrolled the thing--a brief paragraph, maybe three lines long, met his eyes.   


_Governor Threepwood,_

_Plunder Island needs a real Governor, one who won't play favorites and let known criminals escape unpunished. Do us all a favor and resign before you make things worse._   


The note was left unsigned. Angrily, Guybrush glared at the thing, then slowly and deliberately crumpled it in his hand, dropped it on the floor, and systematically ground it into the stones with the heel of his shoe. Fighting to put on a neutral expression, he descended the stairs to meet Elaine, determined to say nothing of the annoying and hateful little message. The parrot, unconcerned, flipped its wings and then fluttered back to its master.

* * *

  
  
Some time later, several hundred miles north...   
  
"-and if the ordeal by hot steering wheel does not make you talk, you will suffer-"

"Do you guys just keep a post in the center of all your villages, just in case you happen to have a prisoner?" the brown-haired woman tied to the aforementioned post demanded in what sounded like real exasperation.

The resident chief of the savages and the Head Threatener (possibly the same character as in scene 1:1) made an attempt to hide his own irritation behind his fiercest scowl. "Yes. Any more questions?"

She pondered mockingly, an effect slightly spoiled by the fact that she couldn't raise either hand to her chin in deep thought. However, she surprised him by changing her tone into something near sympathy. "How many more of these death-threats do we have yet to go?"

The chief sighed and consulted a small purple book he was holding. "About a dozen. I must say you're better at this than most. You're not even to the Begging and Bargaining stage."

"And, to be honest, I was only faking at the Nervous and Uncertain stage," she added, slipping a hand free and shaking it in an exasperated gesture. "I really wish there was some way to cut through all this red tape."

The chief looked glum. "I don't get it. You took the Death by Chihuahuas threat without a flinch. Water torture, fire torture, mud torture, snake torture...nothing." His tone turned petulant. "What am I doing wrong?"

Chariset looked at him in real sympathy. "It's just that I've been through this so many times over the last few months." She raised her other hand and began counting off on her fingers. "The first was in the Puritain colonies, when they wanted to burn me as a witch. When I got free of them, there was that bounty hunter to deal with, then half a tribe of Tonks, then the rival tribe, the Konks. Then, once those two had finally reconciled, I met up with an old friend of mine-" she smiled a little as she recalled sending Horace fleeing back to the Caribbean, a small horde of venomous goldfish on his tail "-and after that, I ran into you on my way back to my ship. And I don't even want to mention what I'd been through before I came up here."

She shook her head, a gesture that completely distracted him from the fact that she had carefully lifted her right foot over the ropes binding ankle to post. "I'm sorry, but after you've heard death threats for seven or eight months straight, they get a little old."

The chief was close to tears nonetheless. "Ah, it's not your fault. I'm just no good at this whole threats thing. I should have run away and joined the circus, like Mama always said." Face in hands, he scarcely noticed when Chariset moved away from the post and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Oh, but you are. Really. When you said you were going to feed me to your pet badger, I was actually almost frightened. Anyone else would have peed their pants, right there."

He raised a tear-stained face. "Really?"

"Really."

"So if I'd said I was going to cut you into pieces and use you to feed my pet Chilean sea bass, would you have been scared?"

"Oh, absolutely," she said ingenuously.

"And if I'd decided to hang you from a tree as eagle bait-?"

"Now you're getting it!" Her smile was encouraging.

"What if I'd covered you in honey and given you to a bear?"

"I'd probably be too scared to think."

"And if I'd-"

"Oh, yes. Absolutely terrifying," Chari responded quickly.

The chief was feeling considerably brighter. "I had no idea there was so much to threats."

"Do you think you can do it on your own now?" She was the picture of casual curiosity.

"I think so. Can you stay until tomorrow, just in case? I'm interrogating a bunch of Spaniards in search of the Fountain of...something."

"Oh, I'm afraid not. I really should get going tonight--I've got friends waiting for me."

"Oh." Disappointed, he nevertheless tried to be civil. "Well, thank you for all your help. If you're ever in the neighborhood, give us a call."

"I will--and be sure to let me know how it works out."

The chief and the entire tribe waved cheerful goodbyes to the dark-haired pirate woman, who paused at the edge of the forest, flashed a brilliant smile and a last wave, and disappeared into the forest.   


* * *

It would be two hours later when the chief finally realized what had happened, but by then she was already on her ship and gone. She nevertheless heard the resounding "_AAARGH_!" ring through the forest, and stifled a smile.

"You did it again, didn't you?" asked Murray with no real curiosity.

Chariset Threepwood just shook her head. "It was almost too easy." The smile threatened, almost broke out, then died at the approach of another thought. "Murray, I know it hasn't been a year yet, but I think we should head back."

"Really?" The former undead demonic skull was almost as incurious as before. "Why?"

"Well, for one, the Horace incident." She and Murray had come to understand each other fairly well over the long months at sea, and they both knew which incident she meant. Still, she felt compelled to add, "We came out here to give the attacks some time to die down-but clearly they haven't. Not if the undead come all this way to try to kill us."

She leaned on the rail and watched the coastline slide by. "But that's not your main reason," Murray prompted after a moment or two of silence.

"No," she sighed, trying to pin down a frustration that was almost as elusive as smoke. "It's just that everything is so....the _same_ here. All the death threats are the same, all the villains are the same, all the forests look the same. Nothing new happens here."

"So what you're saying is, you're bored."

"Yeah." She shook her head. "I never thought I'd say this, but I need to go someplace where I don't have everything figured out. I need adventure. And there's only one place I can find that."

He looked at her and she knew that they were both tired of being so far north, calling nothing but the _Sea Cucumber_ home, tired of never doing much adventuring on solid ground for fear that their ship would be gone when they returned. But all he said was, "You're really different than you were when we left."

"I think we all are," she agreed. "I know this is the last thing I would have wanted a year ago--but maybe I didn't really know what I wanted back then."

"Well, then," he straightened and pushed away from the rail, "you'd better have a look at this." He preceded her into the Captain's cabin and indicated a small pile of notes on top of her tiny desk.

"These were delivered an hour or so ago by one of the Voodoo Lady's spells--something she called a Mailer-Daemon," he informed her as she sorted through the notes. The creature in question was curled up in a corner--a faint green glow--and appeared to be asleep.

Chariset skimmed the piles of notes. Most of them looked like they'd been rolled tightly and then unrolled, except for one that remained flat and was in Guybrush's uncertain handwriting.   


_Chari,_

_I really hope this gets to you-I think I'm in over my head. Someone's been sending me these notes by parrot, and besides that, Elaine's acting strangely. I'm really worried about her, sis..._   


Chariset was frowning by the time she finished her brother's short little note. By the time she had skimmed the rest of the letters, she felt the icy touch of real fear. Without knowing how she knew, she was certain that the undead powers had arisen at last--and this time they were after Elaine and Guybrush.

"That settles it," she told Murray. "A year or no year, we're going back today."

By the time she had penned her reply to Guybrush, the crew--just as eager to get going--had cast off. The _Sea Cucumber_ followed the trail of the Mailer-Daemon back towards the North Caribbean...and possibly adventure.


	3. Taking Their Places

The Song of Monkey Island

Chapter 2: Taking Their Places

* * *

Somewhere off the eastern American coast, about a week later...

It was late evening aboard the _Sea Cucumber_...it was late evening everywhere, for that matter..and the mid-November night air was nippy enough that most of the crew were bundled up in heavier clothing. Chariset was in the Captain's cabin, poring over the fresh stack of notes brought by the Mailer-Daemon by light of her solitary oil lamp. With them was a long letter from Guybrush, which she was reading at the moment. He really wasn't especially gifted with the written word, but she knew his style and had no trouble visualizing the scene he described.

* * *

In the center of the Caribbean, it was monsoon season. Rain poured down in sheets from dull gray clouds every afternoon for days on end, just like this one. Nothing really had any chance to dry out. All of Plunder Island was mud and wet grass--heavy humidity and endless damp. It was enough to set anyone's teeth on edge.

The heavy rain hadn't stopped the daily visits of the green parrot, however, which was the real source of Guybrush's restless nerves. He felt trapped in the fort, not willing to go out into the rain--and there was no one to talk to out there, anyhow. His friends at the Barbery Coast all had bad cases of joint-ache from the rain and were nothing close to good company--Blondebeard's shop needed the single table for paying customers (of which there were several regulars, since the quasi-vegetarian cannibals had moved to the island and the 'El Pollo Diablo' menace had been resolved). The cannibals themselves owed him no favors, and he sensed that Lemonhead had somehow connected him with the wrath of Sherman the volcano-god on Blood Island...an incident over a year old, but still. So his naturally outgoing self had only the handful of soldier-sailors to talk with-and he'd spent all morning with them--or Elaine.

Elaine.... She was another source of confusion to him lately. For weeks now, her attention had clearly been elsewhere...somewhere other than the island and her job. He knew her better than anyone on the island, but her new focus of attention eluded him. She may have been moody, but she wasn't given to daydreaming or flights of imagination-that she should be doing it now baffled him. And that she was doing this when anonymous notes poured in from outside saying she was unfit for her job was coming close to tearing him to pieces.

"She's fit," he mumbled to himself pacing up and down a cold interior hall of the fort. "She's fit she's fit she's fit she has to be fit. There's no one else who could do her job." Guybrush might have been her Lieutenant Governor, but no one had supposed the position would be anything more than honorary. Least of all him.

And yet, over and over, she had been missing for important meetings these past few weeks. He wasn't a bad diplomat and could usually smooth things over until she made her appearance, but none of this was like her at all. He hadn't a clue what was on her mind, and that actually frightened him. Was his lovely young wife breaking under the strain of the Governorship? Was she actually going-

No. Clearly not. He would know madness when he saw it--he had faced it in the person of LeChuck often enough to recognize insanity--and there was nothing of that in Elaine. She was...distracted, perhaps, but clearly not insane.

He climbed up to the top level of the fort. The structure was a large O shape, with one wall composed of mountainside. The other three walls were the outside structure of the fort itself, and they enclosed an open-air courtyard. The hallway Guybrush was in now was open on the courtyard side, so he could look down on the little garden below while still sheltered from the rain.

When the weather was good (as was _not_ the case now), Guybrush and Elaine would walk down there, especially in the early morning when it was still cool. Elaine appreciated gardens, though she had little patience with them, but Guybrush, who had never lived anywhere long enough to plant one, was strangely fascinated with the plants and the soil. A hired gardener cared for most of the courtyard, but Guybrush had claimed one little plot of land, planted some flowers there, and tried not to hover over them too much as they grew. When and if he and Elaine started a family, he hoped they could find a governess capable of undoing the harm caused by their children's over-devoted daddy. This was a pleasant thought, and it evoked a small smile.

It also reminded him that he had been half-heartedly searching for his absent wife. He stepped back from the waist-high stone wall and resumed his slow walk.

He found her at the very top of the fort itself, standing at the highest parapet near the cannons. She had her head up in spite of the downpour, and all of her attention was clearly and distinctly focused _east_. She didn't even seem to notice that her clothes and hair were sopping wet, and the white sleeves of her silk shirt were transparently clinging to her arms.

Guybrush charged out into the rain, only to get soaked to the skin within seconds. It was driving down hard, with a high wind behind it. In the gray light, Elaine looked nearly colorless, but her focus remained so total that she didn't hear him approach the parapet. In fact, she was positioned so that the wind and rain came down directly into her face, but she didn't even blink. He brushed his wet forelock out of his eyes and marched up to stand next to her.

"Elaine, what--?" he began, but she whirled on him with a fierceness that was all the more chilling for its utter lack of heat.

"Shhhhh! Can't you hear it!"

He was baffled. "Hear what?"

"The song! You don't mean to tell me you can't hear the song!"

"Elaine, I can't hear anything," Guybrush told her, meeting a look of utter disbelief.

"You're not listening," she said at last, dismissively, turning back into the rain. "It's everywhere...I can hardly hear it, but it's beautiful. So beautiful...." She strained forward, leaning out so far he involuntarily stepped forward to save her from falling. Eyes closed in the grip of some deep emotion, she began humming a meandering tune, almost completely without melody, in a minor key. It was a song that expressed a deep hunger, a strange desire for something, and it chilled him deeper than anything he had ever known. No sane mind could compose a tune like this one, which could only mean that the mind behind the song was not sane. His one and only was hearing strange music, standing in the rain without seeming to feel it--what possible conclusion could he draw? She had, all without his noticing, gone completely mad.

He stood there, staring at her with a sort of wild lostness, when Elaine unexpectedly snapped back to something that eerily imitated sanity. She cocked her head and smiled at him with mild amusement. "Plunder bunny, you're soaked! What are you doing out here in the rain?" When he, unable to react beyond astonishment, just blinked at her, she took him into her arms tenderly and gently said, "I hope you're not getting sick. It's cold season, you know. Come on, I'd better get you inside."

Guybrush let her coax him inside, but for all that he longed to trust his beloved wife, she was no longer someone he could rely upon. And he had never felt more alone and lost in all his life.

* * *

Chariset folded the letter back up with a feeling of secret dread. She then crossed the cabin to a small table next to her bed, opened the small hidden drawer, and concealed the letter inside it, next to a few other items which were too valuable to leave out in the open--or too dangerous. One of them glinted in the dim light, and she gently picked it up and drew the Necromancer's Amulet into the air. The large, flat rectangular glass pieces which composed it caught what light there was from her lamp and shone in their rainbow colors, but the most interesting stone at all was set in the very center, in a teardrop shape carved in soft stone. It was a faceted deep blue jewel, small enough to nest comfortably in the palm of her hand, still brilliant despite a thin layer of dust. She blew on it gently, eyes closed, and felt the rising warmth as the stone which was the key to the Amulet's power came alive in her hand.

It was an indescribable feeling, the rush of cold blue power along her fingers. If she looked, she knew she would see them blazing in a magical flame; if she desired, the power could cover her entire body. That single stone made her powerful enough to challenge any other being in the Caribbean--her weapon and her defense against any other magic, since the right eye of the Mask of Medusa had combined with the original Amulet. She didn't think the two were ever meant to become one, because their combined power was enough to raise the dead or stone the living. It had broken the arcane magic of Big Whoop itself. Chariset didn't think any one human was supposed to have this much power.

But have it she did, and it was her job to take care of it until some unspecified time when she no longer needed it. Then she would probably return it to the Necromancer, a thought that filled her with something close to dread.

Just then, a loud argument broke out on deck. She sighed, put the Amulet carefully in its place, belted on her coat, and ducked outside to see what was going on.

Three or four men were clustered near the main mast, light from the lanterns over Chariset's head illuminating their faces. The same lighting arrangement cast the door to the Captain's cabin in shadow, preventing the arguing men from seeing her. She would have just waded in, but some instinct told her to wait and listen.

"I tell ya, I say we just keep going. She doesn't know navigation well enough to tell we've changed course, and by the time she figures it out, we're there."

A second voice. "I don't like it. She's never done anything to us. Why should we do this ta her?"

"Why?? Are you out of your mind, man? You don't mean to tell me you don't feel it, too?"

"Look, all I'm saying is, if we want to go there, she'd probably just let us go. _After_ we get back to Plunder Island."

A third spoke up. "Yer a bloomin' idiot, you are! She hates that island! And you think she'd just turn over her ship to a crowd like ourselves?"

The first again. "Not likely!"

"How do you mean to change course without Murray finding out?" asked her sole supporter.

"Murray's wit' us!" chortled the third figure. "He's feeling it stronger than anyone here!"

Chariset had heard enough. She marched out from the concealing shadows with enough anger in her face to show to the would-be mutineers that she'd heard the whole thing. The three men, 'reformed' skeletons, all, looked both startled and surly.

"Get me Murray," she said to the second man, the one who had defended her. As he scurried off, she turned to the others with ice in her tone. "And as for you two, get to your bunks and stay there."

The first looked rebellious. "This is a mutiny, Captain-" he began.

She responded by raising her right hand slightly. A flare of blue fire in the shape of a sword appeared there--harmless, but certainly showy. "Not anymore, it's not."

When the first one moved to speak again, she cut him off. "I can't believe you," she said with disgust. "I trusted you. I saved you from undeath....and this is what your loyalty is worth?" She made a slashing motion with the 'sword,' forcing them back a step. "I gave you your lives back. You would have followed me back to the grave when I freed you on Monkey Island." Was it her imagination, or did they both flinch at that word? "What changed your mind? What in the _world _was so important to you that you wanted to get back there?"

"Well...Captain...you see..." the third began, but stumbled lamely to a halt. Whatever it was, he didn't want to talk about it.

"Get to your bunks and don't talk," she finally ordered. "I'll deal with you later."

Murray came up at that precise second, as the two shuffled reluctantly away. Her anger still at full-force, Chariset whirled on him. "What are you thinking? Why in the world would you want to be part of a mutiny??"

"What?" He looked completely taken by surprise, but she wasn't fooled.

"You know what I mean. How _could_ you, Murray? I took you on, knowing your history, knowing that you wanted to kill my brother--I _still_ took you on. I made you one of my most trusted crewmen. What more did you want? Did you want to be Captain?? Was being First Mate not enough for you?" Now she was just unleashing her anger on him, but at the moment, she didn't care. "Well? Explain yourself."

"Chari, you don't understand what we've been through," the brown-haired man replied. "There's this song..."

Her eyes widened as slow realization dawned. "You're mad. You're all mad. Every single one of you who used to be undead--it's catching up with you and now you're going insane..."

"Chari, no...it's not like that at all."

"Don't call me that!" she snapped.

"'Captain,' then." Murray was looking angry in his own right...and not at all dismayed by the blade of blue flame. "When have you ever known me to attack you? When did I ever even _hint_ that I might still have something against your brother?"

"Never, which is why this is such a surprise now."

"And when have I ever lied to you? About anything?"

She was furious at his stubbornness. "You're lying to me now. You were in league with men from my crew to change the course of this ship and steer us directly to Monkey Island! And you were going to do it behind my back!"

"And do you know why?"

"What's to know?" she retorted hotly. "You're the one hearing strange music in your head. When do madmen need a reason to do what they do?"

"I'm not mad!"

"You're not? You're hearing strange songs in your head--songs no one else hears--and you want to send us secretly back to the very place that nearly killed you last time. Either you're mad or you're trying to have me murdered. Either way, you're dangerous."

"Well, if that's the way you want to argue....most of us here _are_ hearing this music. Just a handful of you aren't...or say you aren't. So who's to say who's really mad here? Can you be so sure you aren't the mad one, and we're not sane?"

This had gone on too long--she'd lose the respect of the rest of her crew if she argued much longer on the open deck with her First Mate. " I refuse to listen any more to a madman," she declared. Singling out two men whom she knew had never been undead, she told them, "Take this man to the brig and lock him up. I'll deal with him when he's come back to his senses."

There were gasps and astonished looks, but she'd expected that. What she hadn't expected was the look of open hurt in Murray's eyes as the two men seized his arms and led him away. He went without a struggle, but his obviously hurt pride and the damage that she had clearly done to their relationship cut her unexpectedly deeply. _He's not mad_, she realized. _Whatever he might be, he's not mad_.

They vanished down into the hold. Chariset stood for a second in the shocked silence, then rounded on her crew. "What are you standing around for? You know what you have to do. Go do it!"

Slightly fearfully, the crew moved away. She 'dropped' the blue sword, sighed, and trudged, frustrated and confused, back to her cabin.

* * *

Murray sat on a pile of straw down in the _Sea Cucumber_'s lone cell. That a ship this size should even have a brig was amazing--it looked like it had been hastily made out of a spare portion of the hold. It even boasted a small antechamber, a heavy door with a barred window, and a tiny porthole. The porthole let in some light, but not much.

Suddenly, a faint glow appeared through the window in the door, followed by a burst of yellow light so bright (after the hour or so in dimness) that it hurt his eyes. Soft footsteps followed, and the jingling of keys.

"Murray," said Chari's voice. "I've come to let you out."

The former demonic skull had his own load of disgust to get off his chest. "Finished with our little temper tantrum, are we?" he sneered.

A sigh. "I might have acted in anger out there, but I was still trying to be reasonable."

"Reasonable?" It was his turn to mock her words. "You have no idea what's going on, not a clue what I'm going through, and you still accuse me of being mad so you don't have to listen to me. I don't see any reason in that."

A brief silence from outside--he couldn't see her face, so he had no idea whether she was silent in thought or anger. "I think I do," she said slowly. "You hear a song..all the time. It's calling you south, to the Caribbean. It's calling everyone who used to be undead."

She paused, and took a deep breath. "And it sounds something like this." She sang half a dozen notes in a low, clear voice.

By the third, a shiver ran down his spine. By the end of the tune, he knew that she knew exactly what he was experiencing. "How do you know that song?"

She passed a sheet of paper through the bars. It was inscribed with crude musical notation. "Guybrush sent this. He's been able to send letters from time to time, and this was in the last batch he sent." Before Murray had time to puzzle over that, she was describing a situation just as long and tangled as the scene aboard the _Sea Cucumber_--Elaine's strange behavior, Guybrush's fears for her sanity, and more. If Chariset had come straight from that letter to her confrontation with him, small wonder she thought he had gone insane.

"But I know you're not mad," she concluded. "So I want to hear from you what exactly has been going on."

He drew a shaky breath. "All right," he began. "It's a song, but it comes and goes. And it seems to affect some of the crew more than others. When it's on, all I want to do is run...but we're out in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing but ocean for miles. And somewhere in there, I just know that, if I could get to Monkey Island, I'd be all right."

"Why Monkey Island? What will do you when you get there?"

"I don't know. It feels like..."

"Like?"

"It feels like I'm being called in by a serpent," Murray finally admitted, putting a name to the fear he'd been feeling for nights on end now. "I feel like...like if I answer the call, I'm going to die...but I can't _help_ it! And when it comes, I don't care any more whether it kills me...I _have_ to go."

She reached through the bars of the door in an evident attempt to take his hand. He reached up and enclosed one of her hands in his own; she placed her other hand on his and stroked the back of his hand in a clear gesture of comfort. "No one will kill you as long as you're part of my crew, Murray," she said in a low voice. "Because anyone who tries will have to answer to me...and the Necromancer's Amulet."

A slight tingle of power warned him just before a strange blue flame came to life over their joined hands-called up by her determination, no doubt. But this time, the fire turned red, rose above their hands into a strangely heart-shaped cloud, and dissipated.

Chari's face was backlit, but he got the sense that she was blushing. "Err...sorry about that.." she began.

"Why, Chari," Murray said, trying to hide an irrational hope behind an air of innocent astonishment. "Whatever was that for?"

She was trying very hard not to flounder on her verbal feet..and not really succeeding. "Well...Murray...you said you were supposed to be my love interest..."

"Which I did," he said, not helping at all, but concealing a smile as best he could.

"And...well..when I had you thrown into the brig, I realized how much I would miss you if you weren't..."

"Weren't with you?" he prompted.

Softly, "Yes."

He reached through the bars, greatly daring, and touched her face. She shifted her grip, not to pull away, but rather to gently hold his hand against her cheek. In a voice gone strangely hoarse, he said, "I've felt the same way....for months, Chari."

"Why didn't you say anything?" she asked, just above a whisper.

"How would that look if we were openly seeing one another...even if I thought you were interested? You're the only woman on a ship full of sailors--the only way we have peace is to assume a completely hands-off policy about you." She stiffened slightly...the only sign he had that he had surprised her. "I wanted to talk to you about this a long time ago...but there's no way to have privacy on a ship this size."

She leaned her head on his hand for a few minutes, just enjoying the dark, private silence of the hold. "I wish I could argue with you, but you're too right," she finally sighed. "We can't take the chance until we're back in the Caribbean, on dry land."

Another long moment of silence. Then-"I suppose I'd better let you out now."

"No, don't!"

She raised her head from his hand. "What? Why not?"

"Because.." he swallowed hard. "Because I might do something to you if I'm free. I told you that the song affects some people more than others...well...it hits me hard. I can't think...I'd do anything. And that song wants you dead, Chari."

"First Medusa, now the Sirens," muttered Chariset, thinking aloud. "Someone up there is in love with Greek mythology. Well then, I guess we'll have to find you some earplugs, Murray."

"What do you mean?"

"I have an idea...but it'll have to wait. We need to get into safer waters...and, all magic aside, I really want to be home. It's been a long few months lately, and I want to be on dry sand again."

"I can only hope we'll have time to walk on the beach someday," Murray said.

"So do I," she said, slipping away on some mysterious errand of her own.   


* * *

She was back shortly before dawn, holding something in her hand that glimmered in the faint light. Before he could realize that she was carrying the Amulet, she had already slipped it over his neck. Instantly, he felt a strange wash of relief come over him.

"I know it won't work forever," she said. "But it'll hold for now."

Murray touched the Amulet which had once brought him back from undeath reverently. "I can't believe you trust me with this."

"Love trusts," was all Chari would say.

* * *

There was a bad song attack a few weeks later....two men had to be sent to the brig and locked in with Murray, but Murray himself weathered the assault with commendable bravery. But then, just as things were beginning to be unbearable, they skirted a long peninsula of land and broke out at last into crystal-clear, aqua waters. Chariset breathed out an audible sigh of relief when they finally left the American coast and began skirting the shallow waters around the gigantic island between them and little Melee. Her crew, Caribbean-born, all, couldn't resist the temptation to cluster at the rail and stare down, delighting in the ability to look through 300 or 400 feet of water to see the ocean floor below.

She was no exception. Although blocked by the occasional dark patch, the sand shone white below the _Sea Cucumber_'s keel, and, this close to an island, fish and coral were in profusion. One large patch of coral flashed brilliantly in the light just before their shadow fell over it.

_Wait a minute_.... Coral doesn't flash. _What in the world is down there?_

Chariset called one of her crew up and pointed out another dark patch which glinted suspiciously. He picked up his spyglass, peered at the ocean floor--then let out a curse and scrambled back.

"What? What is it?" said she, startled.

He handed her the glass--she put it to her eye and gazed down.

Empty bone sockets met her gaze. The dark patch was composed entirely of skeletons.

However, these skeletons were moving. They were clearly and distinctly _following_ the boat. The glints of light had been off of the swords they carried as they stalked her, obviously meaning to cut her down. Walking skeletons, she realized, can't swim....but they don't need to rest or breathe, either.

"What now, Captain?" asked the crewman.

She turned what must have been a grim face on her sailor. "Unless we can find some way to defeat them, none of us can go to shore. The moment the water is shallow enough that they can stand up, they'll attack."

"So we're trapped on this boat?"

She nodded. He indulged himself in another curse, but she swore him to secrecy before he could get away. Let him...and Murray...and Guybrush...be the only ones to worry over the fact that the _Sea Cucumber_ had just become their prison.


	4. Accelerando, poco un poco

The Song of Monkey Island

Chapter 3: _Accelerando, poco un poco_

Deep within the Caribbean, Crescent Island....   


The tiny atoll sat on the high seas less than a mile from Plunder. Though by no means invisible from its larger sister island, it was concealed from Puerto Pollo and the Governor's fort by Plunder's high central mountain. No one ever went out there, because there was nothing to see there besides a semicircle of jagged rocks, concealing a lean little strip of beach and one or two hardy palm trees. It looked absolutely inhospitable. It _was_ absolutely inhospitable.

And this was precisely why Big Whoop had ordered Horace and Largo to make it their home for the duration of the mission.

Largo leaned on one of the struggling palm trees and wondered how any coconut had survived on this beach long enough to take root. The waves dashed with mad fury against the sand night and day, never a letup, making landing a boat here absolutely impossible, even if the sailor had enough skill to avoid running into the sharp coral rocks which composed three sides of the island, the interior of the crescent was by no means calm water. Waves crashed and rebounded off of the arms of rock extending out from the beach--any boat caught in that maelstrom would surely be dashed into the interior walls or, if a decent size, would have its sides scraped to ribbons merely entering the deadly C. They had little fear of discovery.

Big Whoop himself had landed them here through some mysterious power of his own, opening a portal and depositing them onto the damp sand. After them had come their pitiful stock of supplies--mostly small pieces of paper and various writing utensils--but with sundry other items as well. Two blankets (the undead didn't need to sleep, but it was comforting and brought a few hours of oblivion to what were rapidly becoming dull, boring lives), a pair of swords, a handful of skeletal guards, and, last but not least, a dollop of the living magma which composed Big Whoop. This handful of molten stone had shaped itself into a tiny simulacrum of its parent figure and apparently was somehow linked back to him. Whether he was a scout to see how the plan was going or a spy to ensure the cooperation of the two operatives, Largo was not sure. He had never been much for speculation, anyhow.

Wingbeats warned him that the now-familiar green parrot was coming in. She was their carrier of messages back and forth from Plunder Island, a near-tireless flier. Horace had been concerned about feeding her, but apparently she scavenged on Plunder and did just fine on her own.

Polly (for that, however unoriginal, was her name) glided in to land among the rocks, flipped her wings to her back with near-catlike fastidiousness, and cocked her head as she regarded Largo with bright eyes. Her left leg, carrier of three messages that morning, was bare once more.

Up came Little Whoop (Largo's private name for the simulacrum), followed by Horace and a skeleton. "Speak, Polly," he commanded, waiting expectantly for some kind of answer.

"_Bwwwaaak_. _Get **out** of here, you damned bird! Get out!_ _Bwwwacck_." Polly was trained to remember the last thing she had heard, and could even mimic human inflections fairly well. There was no doubt from the parrot's recitation that the recipient of her last message was stretched almost to his limits and perhaps it wouldn't take much to send him over, to the breaking point.

"Well done, Polly," applauded Little Whoop. Unable to touch the bird directly (for obvious reasons), the lava-creature nodded at Horace, who scratched the green parrot gently on the head. She closed an eye and uttered a soft '_Bbwwaak_' as she enjoyed the attention.

Little Whoop quickly lost interest in his pet bird. "I think we've pushed this as far as we can--clearly our target is unsettled and in no way able to think rationally at this point," he informed Horace and Largo. "It's time to proceed with Step 2. Stand by to be transported to your new positions."

The two unwilling partners exchanged glances. They'd had no orders besides "Wait here and write letters, threatening little notes designed to annoy and unsettle, but nothing more than threats." Puzzled, they'd done so, wondering why petty torments would bother a (reasonably) self-assured pirate like Guybrush Threepwood--only to see him overreact far beyond their expectations. They were, in fact, driving him to distraction. But if this was merely was Step 1, then Step 2 must mean something far more direct.

So they stood by, tense with anticipation, while Little Whoop curled into a rounded puddle on the sand (the shape requiring the least amount of energy on his part to maintain), communicating with Big Whoop. Suddenly, without the least amount of warning, the sand opened beneath their feet--before they even had time to gasp, they landed unceremoniously in a thick patch of bushes. "Hide here," whispered Little Whoop through the portal. "Wait for our target." After his whisper, a pair of swords came down through the portal, followed by something else. A pair of shackles.

* * *

"Now," Little and Big Whoops whispered to themselves/himself, "let us go sing another song to our fair Elaine Marley."

The green parrot raised her head from beneath her wing as Little Whoop approached her, but she was far too late to stop him from reaching a glowing mental 'hand' around her mind. Her end, when it came, was mercilessly quick--she had time for only one final _Bwwwwwaaaak!_ of terror before collapsing bonelessly to the ground. With his birdlike talons, Little Whoop _squeezed_ in a horribly indescribable fashion, crushing her mind until it was no more than bloody mental pulp, and only then, with slow and evil delicacy, did he insert himself into it. A moment later, the parrot stood and shook herself, then began to preen as calmly as if nothing had happened, then sprang into the air and flew heavily towards Plunder Island. Behind, on the beach, lay an already-cooling, rounded-puddle-shaped rock of unanimated magma, discarded.

* * *

  
The parrot flew out over the ocean, reveling in flight even as well-trained wing muscles bore 'her' over the water, over the shore, over a long string of docks, looking for one particular ship painted in dark red and gold. Men were below already, stocking and loading the ship--Big Whoop's operatives, cleverly disguised. The parrot perched on a cross-bar on the main mast and gazed down on the preparations below. 'She' went unnoticed.

For a few long minutes, the parrot stood silent. Then she threw back her head and began to sing the Song of Calling, hindered only slightly by her limited vocal chords. At the first sounds, all the men below looked up with such abruptness that it seemed their necks would break. They stared blankly up at the bird as she sang--and around them, more pirates joined their ranks, both hidden agents and clearly living human beings. From the direction of the fort, a small trickle emerged, including four men who had once served under Chariset Threepwood. With glazed, blank expressions, they moved down the road, up the gangplank, and onto the deck.

Following them was a red-haired woman. She passed two small patches of disturbance in the bushes without a pause--Horace and Largo, resisting the song--and walked up towards the ship, her lovely face filled with expectation. When she drew near to the side of the ship, the parrot swooped down, circled the woman, then landed with surprising delicacy on her shoulder. The Song of Calling diminished down to three or four whistled notes.

Elaine turned her head and gave the parrot an affectionate pat, then straightened "We must make ready," she began, with all the authority of a born Captain. "We have a long journey ahead of us." Eyes alight with near-manic purpose, the assembled crew hurried to obey.

* * *

  
When Big Whoop sang, even Chariset felt the tremor in the air now. Murray's hand tightened on hers convulsively, while the Amulet around his neck glowed too brightly to look at directly. Eyes squeezed shut, he endured without a sound. The other men in the cell, some close to half-mad, groaned on the floor or beat themselves with frenzied desperation against the sides of the hold. Over half of her crew inhabited the brig now, some of them so enthralled by the power of the song that they would have thrown themselves overboard and paddled under their own strength to Monkey Island. Or drowned in the attempt. _Like Odysseus_, she thought grimly. _I've chained them to the mast so they can't go to their deaths_. _But they didn't even want to hear this song_. _And the rest of us didn't get the choice about the earplugs_.

The air stilled, the men groaned, and some collapsed to the floor. Murray's grip loosed, and he leaned on the door, breathing hard. "Murray," she began, feeling heartsick, "It's so hard to watch you go through this. It's so hard on me to keep you locked up in there."

His labored breathing slowed a little as the Amulet dimmed its intense light. "I know...But it won't be much longer...now." He raised clear eyes to hers, eyes without a trace of insanity in them, and the light from the Amulet died entirely. "It's over," he said in a tone of near-wonder. "It's gone!"

"The song?" Chariset hardly dared hope she could have Murray back at her side again. "Are you sure?"

As if in answer, another tremor of song swept through. The Amulet remained dark. Murray looked at her joyously as it passed him right by, not affecting him any more than it did her. "It really is gone!"

"Oh, Murray!" She reached into the bars and hugged as much of him as she could, temporarily deaf to the moans of the other sailors. "It's so good to have you back!"

They embraced for a few moments before Murray made any attempt to pull away. "So...do you think you could let me out now?"

"Oh...right." Chariset felt a little foolish for not remembering sooner. She fumbled out the heavy ring of keys she'd been hiding in her sash, found the right one, slipped it into the lock, and turned. Murray was watching intently as she coaxed the old lock into opening, retrieved her key, and then slid the bolt open. "Hurry."

As soon as the door was open wide enough, Murray was through, catching her up in a huge bear hug. "I've missed you, Captain." Greatly daring, he lifted her chin up toward him and planted a small kiss, not on her mouth as she was expecting, but farther down her jawline, just before her ear. Oblivious to the staring prisoners, she turned her head and forced the issue just a bit, kissing him. He was obviously not expecting this, but she insisted, inwardly amused, scratching lightly on the back of his neck with her fingernails--and he gave in and returned the favor. How long this lasted, she had no idea, but they were both breathing slightly faster when he broke off the kiss.

Murray gently teased an escaped strand of hair from her ponytail back over her shoulder with one hand while he slipped the Amulet gently off his neck and dangled it teasingly before her in the other. "Looking for this?" he asked lightly as she made an unsuccessful reach for it. His smile was purely playful as he tossed it from hand to hand, keeping it just out of her range-and then he tossed it to the floor in the anteroom of the brig.

Suddenly, and too late, she realized that she had forgotten to close and lock the door behind Murray. She whirled around to snatch up the amulet even as hands reached from behind the door and pulled it inside. In the same instant, her forward motion was arrested by two strong hands on her arms, just above her elbows.

"Murray, this is no time for games!" Chariset struggled against his grip lightly, then with all her strength. He didn't let her go. Angrily, she whipped her head around to face him as well as she could, only to see him leveling a dagger at her eye level. Her dagger. In his hand. She froze in place as much from shock as from the eloquent threat of the cutting edge.

Face passionless, he rested the knife point against the side of the throat he had touched so gently a moment ago, while the mad captives in the brig broke free and swarmed up out of the hold to attack her unsuspecting loyal crew. "You're right," he responded calmly, the light in his eyes gone cold and murderous as he gestured to another insane crewman, bearing a strong length of rope. "This is no time for games."

* * *

For what seemed like the thousandth time, Guybrush paced around the interior of the fort, hunting for Elaine. Crumpled in his hand was a note from that parrot:

_From the Concerned Citizens of Plunder Island_.

_We have reason to believe that the Governor not only is derelict in her duties but is planning to leave her post and the island altogether_. _And you, sir, are just the sort who would not only let her get away with it, but would probably help_. _If you mean to step down, step down, but if you flee, you are little more than a coward_.

It was low, it was petty, he really shouldn't have allowed it to affect him as much as it had, but his nerves were worn down from almost two months of this treatment, especially since it eerily coincided with Elaine's strange behavior. He wasn't sure he bought Chari's explanation--that it was a call from Monkey Island--since the one who explained all this to her was suffering the strange effects as well. Perhaps it was time to go see the woman who generally helped him sort things through, the Voodoo Priestess. He'd been trying not to depend so much on her lately, after she loaned him the Mailer Daemon, but it was time to admit that he was out of his league. It was just that this problem was nowhere so blatant as a pirate curse or an undead zombie--he'd hoped to be able to handle this one himself.

Feeling just slightly more in control now that he had some kind of plan, Guybrush stepped away from the courtyard side of the corridor and glanced through one of the rare outside windows in passing-

And saw a sight which completely shattered his brief moment of collectedness.

The _Seahorse_ was up near the closest Puerto Pollo dock, swarming with men. Antlike, the crew carried crates nearly as large as they were up the gangplank and into the ship--from the look of the cargo piles yet to load, the '_Horse_ was about to be better supplied than she had ever been in her commissioned life.

And there, down supervising the whole operation, was the figure of a woman with flaming red hair. Elaine.

_She really **is** leaving_, he thought astonished. Hard on the heels of that thought came another. _I've got to stop her!_

He ran through the corridors of the fort faster than was generally advisable and tore down the beach toward Puerto Pollo at the fastest run he could manage.

* * *

  
"Here he comes!" whispered Horace unnecessarily as their target came barreling towards them at a dead run, arms and legs flying in all directions. "How are we going to stop him?"

"Like this," responded Largo, who was slightly closer to the fort than Horace. And, without any hesitation, he stuck his foot out directly in the path of the running Guybrush.

There was a slight sound of impact, and then Guybrush himself came somersaulting past them, still at a considerable speed, to land on his face in the sand with a heavy _thud_, winded and probably a little stunned as well. Largo leaped after him, seized both his arms, and clapped both his wrists in the irons before either Horace or Guybrush quite knew what was happening. Largo stood on his prize in some triumph while Horace collected himself and stood up.

"I can't tell you how long I've wanted to do that," the ugly little man sneered, still pinning Guybrush to the sand with one long foot. The pirate himself showed no signs of being able to get up, so Horace helped Largo haul him to his feet. One entire side of his face was covered in sand which, hands bound, he couldn't brush away. Largo sneered into his dazed eyes. "_This_ is for a bucket of mud on my head. _This_ is for your precious voodoo doll. _This_ is for making me look like a fool in front of LeChuck!" He punctuated his words with blows--a tactic which unfortunately had the exact opposite effect of the one desired. Because by the time Largo had run out of words, he himself was out of breath, while Guybrush had recovered himself enough to respond.

Eyes narrowed in anger, Guybrush regarded his hunchbacked assailant as though the handcuffs didn't even exist. "You pathetic flunky. _ I_ made you look like a fool? Maybe it's because you were one to begin with."

Largo responded with another blow, this one to the jaw. Guybrush made no attempt to evade but simply took the hit and went on. "You never did know when to pick your fights," he said scornfully. "You never even knew whose side you were on, most of the time. You like to pretend you were LeChuck's right-hand man, but he never trusted anyone until the day he died. I should know, I was there." Largo glared death at Guybrush with the same helpless intensity as if he wore the cuffs--perhaps he did, the cuffs of knowing the truth when he heard it. "And the same goes to you, Horace," he added. "You got what you paid for. There was only one way to serve LeChuck--undead. You'd have done better to stay with Chari. At least she would have kept you alive."

Horace stiffened. Largo gestured with his eyes. Fists clenched, they both sprang at their captive in sheer irk-

-only to have his step adroitly to one side at the last minute. Largo landed a punch directly in Horace's eye, received the same in his prominent nose, and the two collapsed on the sand, moaning.

A pair of handcuffs landed on the sand next to them. "And I won't be needing these. You're welcome to them," said Guybrush in parting.

Horace put a hand over his eye while Largo tried to stem the trickle of blood from his beak, and he was unable to decide whom he hated more in that instant--Guybrush, his sister, Largo, or Big Whoop. He settled on all four, with a dab of contempt for himself.

* * *

  
Guybrush hurried away, unwilling even to stop and enjoy his second victory over Largo LaGrande. He ran up the dock, over the plank leading to the _Seahorse_'s deck, and across the smooth boards, searching for Elaine. An instant later, she dropped down from the rigging just behind him, landing with practiced ease, hardly a hair out of place, scarcely disturbing the green parrot who rode her left shoulder.

_A green parrot?_

"There you are!" she brightened, coming up to him with a dazzling smile of joy. "I've been waiting for you."

And then, without another comment, she raised her hands and shoved him backwards with all her strength. Too surprised even to fight for balance, Guybrush tumbled through a hatch just behind him, down through blackness, and landed hard on a wooden floor inadequately covered in straw. Even as the rest of him complained bitterly at this treatment, his head slammed into the hard surface at his back and all thought vanished painfully into starry blackness. He never saw Elaine lower the grilled door over the mouth of the hatch and padlock it into place above his head, then collect the crew and give the order to cast off. But the green parrot fluffed up her feathers with what looked suspiciously like satisfaction, gazing down on the motionless form of one of Big Whoop's worst enemies.   


* * *

Bright, cheerful sunlight streamed down on the _Sea Cucumber_'s deck, sparkling on the water and casting interesting shadows over everything through the long, twisting ribbons of Caribbean clouds. Her crewmen, slightly less than half of the usual number, scurried about doing the work of twice that number, driven to their duties with a furor their former Captain had never seen before.

_Why do they always tie prisoners to the mast?_ pondered Chariset from Odysseus' position, struggling with the expert sailor's knots binding her wrists and watching helplessly as Captain Murray left his place near the bow of the ship and strolled arrogantly down the port rail. She fought to suppress her anger and pain at his betrayal, even as his much-loved face turned toward her. _He can't help doing what he's doing_, she told herself, trying to see reason. _This isn't even Murray you're seeing. Something else controls him now_. _Something on Monkey Island_.

But what? LeChuck was dead. Wasn't he? If he was really gone, then what else could command the undead soldiers? What other power could sing this Siren song and command even those soldiers who were restored to humanity to obey? _You have to admit this is a new one_, she thought wryly. _Even LeChuck's power ended at undeath_. _Except for a very few, he could never rule the living_.

_But what if something ruled LeChuck?_

What could? All he ever wanted was power.

_And where did he get that power?_

Big Whoop.

A slow feeling of certainty rippled through Chariset as the name came to her. "Big Whoop," she whispered. The source of enormous power which had nearly killed them all once. The 'treasure' Guybrush had been seeking for close to half a year, once he found his feet as a pirate. The 'treasure' which had resulted in the resurrection of LeChuck as a zombie pirate and whose power had enslaved hundreds of innocent tourists seeking only amusement and the cheap thrill of a roller coaster ride. Did that incredible power now have a will and agenda of its own?

Chariset tried not to shudder too visibly at the idea of all of LeChuck's power free-roaming the Caribbean but without any of LeChuck's checks on it. It wanted her dead and was willing to subvert every crewman she had to do so. Why?

A flit of light at the corner of her eye caught her attention--she turned to see the Mailer Daemon, clearly agitated. (For an insubstantial spirit, to be clearly agitated was quite a feat). The creature's yellow eyes almost looked piteous as it gazed at her, bound to the mast, then it expanded to a large square. Lights flickered across the square, and she realized that it was displaying an image.

Chariset watched, half in wonder, half in horror, as Guybrush raced down the beach toward Puerto Pollo, was ambushed, taken prisoner, and attacked by Largo and Horace. Silently she cheered him on as he made his escape with what looked like careless ease and ran up the _Seahorse_'s gangplank--a _Seahorse_ loaded for a long journey and fully crewed. Elaine greeted him with a smile, and he began to relax--and then she shoved him backwards down a hatch. He fell from sight of the deck, but the Daemon managed to keep him in the center of its projected image, and she winced in sympathy as he struck the wooden floor below and lay motionless, as if the it had been she who had fallen. Barred shadows fell across his face as Elaine herself locked him into the doorless hold. And riding _her_ shoulder was that green parrot.

"Go take care of Guybrush," she whispered to the Daemon. "I'll be all right for now." The spirit rolled itself up, made a motion very like a bow, and fled.

Chariset drew herself as straight as she could. She had to at least try to be strong, for both of them.   


* * *

With only the occasional comfort break, Chariset remained tied to the mast for most of the afternoon, until scudding gray clouds on the horizon announced the approach of a spring storm. With unexpected fury, it overtook the small _Sea Cucumber_ and spent itself out with a near-supernatural rage. But Murray and the crew stood firm, even as waves washed across the deck, and under their capable hands the _Sea Cucumber_ forged on through the rough seas.

Chariset wished with all her might that she could be out there helping instead of bound helplessly to the central mast, thrown here and there with every wave. The salty water soaked her feet, washing boards already made slippery by heavy rain. She fought to keep her balance, knowing that if she slipped and fell she might not be able to get up again.

She had almost no idea where they were or how close to shore until a particularly deep wave brought up one of the skeletal soldiers who shadowed the boat. It rolled and tumbled on deck, apparently stunned, and a second huge wave carried it back under. They must be close to some kind of shore.

"Murray!" she called into the wind. "We're too close to land! You've got to turn her or we'll wreck!"

Murray heard and staggered towards her, bracing himself against the waves. Before she could say a word, he drew out his dagger and began slicing the rope holding her to the mast.

"What are you doing??"

He ignored her, stuck the knife into her sash, but left her arms bound. "Chariset, I have to deliver you to Monkey Island--but they never said I had to do so personally." Then, more loudly, "And they never said you had to be alive!"

She gasped in horror as Murray picked her up, her hands still bound behind her, and walked to the rail. His eyes blazed half-sane as he held her tightly, disregarding her attempts to get free. "You're a curse and a scourge on this boat," he declared loudly. "We'd be better off without you." Then, quietly, "God protect you."

With one swift motion, he tossed her over the side of the rail, just as the ship hit a huge swell of sea. She fell a long, long ways before she struck the water, drawing in air in one huge, prolonged gasp....and as she did, she saw Murray turn at the rail and put his face into his hands.

Then the waters closed over her head.

* * *

Above, the sea grew calm and peaceful, but one being who was not technically supposed to weep was crying anyhow, tears concealed in the rain--crying for his betrayal and sacrifice of the only woman he had ever loved.


	5. Enter Elijah

The Song of Monkey Island

Chapter Four: Enter Elijah

Chariset thrashed helplessly against the cords binding her wrists as she sank deeper into the ocean, kicking as hard as she could--but the water was dragging her down. The ropes refused to slacken, and her panicked struggling was only knotting them tighter. Pressure was building in her lungs and slowly creeping up her throat--she was running low on air. In calmer circumstances, she could hold her breath well over a minute--this was not one of those circumstances. She had mere seconds before she tried to inhale seawater...and that would be the last anyone ever saw of her. She stared up at the vanishing surface of the ocean and all she knew in her terror was that she would never see Guybrush or Elaine again...or Nic, or Wally, or Murray.

Or Murray...

Then she remembered...

With a desperate, almost convulsive movement, she yanked the knife out of her waist-sash. Her lungs already felt like they were about to burst, and her head swam as she turned the knife in her hand and hacked at the cords. She nearly gasped as salt-water invaded the cuts she made in her wrists, trying to loosen the bonds--then the rope broke. She bolted like a fish for the surface.

Two inches from air, her lungs gave out and she gasped in a deep breath of sea-water. She choked on burning salt--sheer blind panic and animal will to live gave her a brief burst of strength. She broke the surface with enough power to rise half-out of the water, falling over onto a large crate which just happened to be in reach. She coughed and choked until she cleared the water from her lungs, then clung to the crate, eyes shut and out of strength. Her clothes were completely soaked, her hair was in loose tangles around her shoulders, one of her boots was gone, her wrists were cut deeply enough to bleed in half a dozen places and stinging from the salty water, eyes likewise. She let them water until mock-tears fell down her cheeks, clearing out the salt.

It hurt to breathe...it hurt to cling to the crate...it hurt to move. Chariset tried to tell herself that at least she was alive, but she didn't feel like a survivor. Between physical and emotional hurts, she felt like a woman who had just lost a battle.

_I'm alive_..._but out in the middle of the ocean_. _No food, no water_.._.well, no drinkable water_.._no company_. _I've lost the Amulet and I don't know whether I can heal myself_. _I've lost Guybrush. I've lost Murray_._ I've lost_-

Chariset stopped short when she realized what she was about to say: "I've lost the only man I ever loved."

But Murray had said he loved her, then tied her to the mast. He had thrown her into the ocean to drown, then given her a knife to free herself. And what had he said, just before she fell? Something....strange...

Delivered...to Big Whoop...but it doesn't say whether you have to be dead or alive. What does that mean?

Big Whoop kills its victims...could it be that he was actually giving me a chance to live? Was he trying to save me from certain death by sending me to near-certain death?

_He can't have thought you'd survive_, she thought. _He must have been certain you'd drown anyway_. _You would have, if not for that knife_. _You were under a long time_.

How long?

She raised herself up from the crate--hadn't there been a storm going on when she went in? Now there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the _Sea Cucumber_ was nowhere in sight. Even with a driving wind, it would take several minutes for a ship that tall to disappear from sight, sails and all...but she was alone on the sea.

It had felt like an eternity--and to be honest she wasn't certain how long she had been out of the water--but even a conservative estimate said she'd survived under water for five minutes, perhaps longer.

_So I might be able to hold my breath for ten minutes? _ It was a surprising thought, but clearly a welcome one, considering the ability might have just saved her life.

_And one that will surely come in useful again, especially if I keep it to myself_....

* * *

Chariset remained where she was for about an hour, recovering as best she could. Then she closed her eyes and tried to call the blue flame from the Amulet. It came, weakly, and danced over her mistreated wrists and hands. The wounds slowly closed, sealing into red scars which faded white. Now she didn't have to worry about infection from the salt water. Murray's knife--actually her own, she remembered--she embedded in the wood of the crate for the time being.

As she did, she heard a mistreated _Bwwwaaaaak!_ from within. She was just curious enough to pry a board loose from top of the crate so she could peer inside.

A bright, beady eye met her gaze. She pulled back instinctively as the crate's lone occupant poked its red head out of the hole, then wriggled and thrashed until the rest of the feathered body emerged. A magnificent scarlet parrot with blue primaries shook its wings, ruffled up its feathers, and tilted its head as if to get a better look at her.

He seemed to be waiting for a greeting. "Hi there," Chariset managed.

"Hi there," repeated the parrot.

"How are you?" she offered, feeling a little foolish.

"Fine. How are you?"

She eyed his impressive beak, far too close to her fingers for her comfort. "Nice birdie."

"Me is a nice birdie," the bird reassured her.

_Umm_...."Pretty bird."

"_Very _pretty bird. _Bwaaak_."

She sighed. The bird was clever but ridiculously friendly--and not helping her situation any. "You ought to go get some food," she told it. "Just because I'm starving doesn't mean you have to."

"Get some food," the parrot agreed, bobbing its head up and down. "Get some food."

"Well....go on." She waved a hand at the red parrot.

He blinked jet eyes at her, not understanding. "Find a tree, birdie. Go find a tree!"

"Tree!" The parrot whistled happily, launched into the air, and took off with slow flaps of its wings, looking over its shoulder as if to make sure she was following.

Well, when she went overboard, she had seen signs that they were near land. A parrot might know where that was as well as she did. She turned the crate around and began pushing it through the water in the direction the parrot had left, using it to support her weight while she kicked with her feet. It might well be a long, long swim.

Below her, about a hundred feet down, a gang of perhaps a dozen skeletons turned and followed her slow progress. She was still too far away to reach, but they could wait...

* * *

Several hours later, she espied her feathery friend (a parrot has a very distinct profile in the air) flying directly toward her. He landed heavily on the crate, deposited a small object on the boards before her, and looked up expectantly. When she gaped at him, astonished, he helpfully explained. "Found tree. Food."

Half a coconut lay on the crate before her, cracked open through some unknown parroty means. What was more, it was so fresh that it still had some milk in it--milk the parrot must have deliberately carried by holding the shell carefully upright. And between inhaling sea-water and swimming in salt for half the day, Chariset felt more dehydrated than she had ever been in her life.

"You're amazing," she told the parrot in heartfelt gratitude, pulled herself up on her elbows, seized the shell, and drank it down before the illusion could vanish. It was richer than she'd expected, and warm, but wet, and that was all that mattered. "Thank you," she told the parrot when every drop was gone. He puffed out every feather and looked pleased.

She stroked his feathers with one hand and scratched out bites of coconut with the other. "So you've decided to look after me now," she mused. "Like Elijah and his ravens." He responded by leaning in closer and closing a bright eye. "Well, parrot, I don't know where you were going, but you just might have saved my life."

"_Bwaaaaaaak_.."

"I'm serious. And anyway, you seem determined to stick around..."

He leaned in even closer. "_Bwaaaaaacck_."

"I'll take that as a yes. And I can't just keep calling you 'Parrot'..."

A rapid shaking of the head.

"So.....how's 'Elijah' strike you?"

He purred.

She stifled a yawn and resumed kicking her way through the water. Elijah hopped onto her shoulder and shook his feathers lightly, a red shape just at the edge of her vision. The empty shell rocked slightly with the motion of the crate.

"Where land, Elijah? Where tree?"

He pointed with his black bill. The sky was slowly beginning to darken, but she could make out a black shape at the edge of the ocean. She sighed and resumed her progress.

* * *

Late night. The sky was alive with green-tinted light and a million stars. In a city, where candles or lamps over-brighten the sky, it would have seemed pitch-black, but this was the open sea. There was nothing to obscure the scene below of a woman, a crate, and a black parrot who would probably be red in normal light.

They were coming upon a rocky outcropping--a high coastline surrounded by deeper water. The island sloped down near the water to the left and right, but where the crate was about to touch, there was no convenient place to bring a boat out of the water.

Chariset was dozing, head on her folded arms, elbows locked into the raised edge of the crate's top, waking and sleeping at intervals. She told herself every moment of wakefulness that she was only going to rest her eyes, but her tired body was too exhausted to continue at full alertness for long. Elijah had tucked his head under his wing once it was clear that the ocean currents were carrying them into the island instead of away, and besides, he was just as tired as his new mistress.

All unawares, they drifted in closer, and closer to the low cliff which gleamed faintly in the dim light. They drifted in, touched with a light bump, and came to rest. Chariset raised her head, surprised by the sudden end of motion, dimly curious why there was a strange white obstacle in front of them.

Then, with no warning at all, they were under attack.

A sharp blade slashed at her legs, slicing through the cured-but-waterlogged leather of her remaining boot and cutting a burning line in the flesh beneath. Other skeletal fingers grabbed at her bare foot, cold as death, and more horrible. They got a grip around her ankle and pulled, trying to drag her down into the black water below.

In half a second, Chariset flashed from half-awake to hyper-alert. She was out of the water (though she had no idea how she'd managed it later) and standing on top of the crate itself before her mind had completely registered what was going on. Knife in one hand, bracing herself against the cliff-face with the other, she swiftly bent down and severed the hand which still gripped her ankle at the bony wrist. She kicked the horrid thing loose into the ocean, while Elijah came to life on her shoulder and shrilled angrily.

Another soldier lunged at her from the water--she stomped down with her hard boot-sole on his bony head as hard as she could, sending him under. More hands reached up to grab the crate, trying to tip it, while she fought for a balance that was none too steady as it was. Still more hands grabbed at her hair from above--other skeletons had come out of the water and were standing on the cliff-face above her. She seized the bone arms and threw him over her head into the water. The arms came loose in her hands--and one was still clutching a nicked but still perfectly good sword. She pried it from his undead grasp and swung around in time to cut the legs out from under yet another skeleton on the bank.

Elijah took flight, screaming insults. He fluttered between two skeletons on the left lower bank, causing them to swing at him simultaneously. He darted out of the way, leaving them to decapitate one another. She could have cheered.

Another assault on her hair. Another overhead toss. But this on was more tenacious-he kept his hold on her hair and tore a few hairs loose as he flew. She winced, even as she brought her sword down in a blow that would split his skull--when she noticed that he was strangely fascinated by the hairs in his hand. In fact, he had ceased to attack her at all, even though he still clung to the side of the crate.

That reminded her of her wounded calf--it was still bleeding onto the crate at a decent rate. But she was under attack from all sides--to stay here was to die when the skeletons managed to tip her into the water or cut her off from the island. Plus she was tiring as her adrenaline ran out. She needed to find a safe place for herself and Elijah to sleep before she collapsed somewhere.

With a desperate effort, she turned, tucked dagger into sash, thrust her sword into the top of the cliff, and scrabbled frantically up. Elijah tormented one skeleton, giving her enough time to tear one sleeve off at the elbow and throw it at another.

He stopped short. She kicked the other soldier off the cliff, where he landed on the abandoned crate. A few drops of blood still lay there, which held the entire remaining horde at bay for the time being.

That settled it. She tore off her other sleeve, used it to staunch the flow of blood from her leg as best she could, pulled out a few hairs from her head to add to the bundle, and left the entire mess lying on the beach. Then she whistled to Elijah and fled at the best pace she could manage. Her wounded calf still dripped blood, but she could only hope she'd thrown her pursuers off the scent for at least a few hours...

Much, much later that night--how much later she could not say--she found a tiny opening in a pile of rocks which led into a moderately large cave. With Elijah snuggled against her, she pulled herself inside, plugged the entrance with another rock, curled up against it, and did a fair imitation of a dead woman for the next few hours. Her last thought was to wonder where she would wake up.

* * *

Guybrush fought down a groan as he forced one eye to open. The thinnest possible thread of moonlight seeped down into the hold--somehow it managed to fall directly into his eye and burn directly through to his retina. He winced away, squeezing the eye shut, and rolled aside, off the thin blanket and onto a more-than-solid wooden floor, jarring his head slightly and reminding his entire body how much it hurt to land hard on a solid surface and then lie there for hours.

_Wait a minute_.... His thoughts struggled to work properly. _Blanket_?

He struggled up to a sitting position, then pushed off and slowly stood up, leaning on the wall as most of the blood proceeded to drain out of his head. After a few long minutes he began to feel more human again, though his temples were pounding in time to his pulse. No matter how many times something like this happened, he still couldn't quite take it in stride.

The hold in which he found himself was very small and very dimly lit. Only a narrow strip existed which was not directly beneath the locked door of the hatch (which he instinctively avoided). Back and forth he paced, slowly and unsteadily, over those three or four boards--the room was exactly five of his steps long, four was perfect since he didn't care to run into the walls. Step step step step, turn, step step.... What was he doing here? His last coherent memory was of Elaine...

Elaine with that green parrot on her shoulder, commanding an entire crew of the former undead. Elaine, who had locked him in here in the first place. Elaine, who had been acting strangely for close to two months now.

Elaine, who intended to make a present of him to whatever dark power she served now.

He had to stop her. Whichever power drew her to Monkey Island, it didn't have her best interests in mind. It would destroy her just as quickly as it would destroy him, this he knew with absolute certainty.

He scanned the tiny room, eyes narrowed in thought. In the center of the hold was a blanket and a small pillow, directly under the hatch. Someone had been looking after him. Not any of the owners of those busy footsteps overhead, though--the entire crew was too focused on their destination to be concerned over him, provided he was good and stayed put. Which he didn't intend to do.

A thin, misty form appeared in the corner of the hold--he had his answer. The Mailer-Daemon.

"Are you all right, sir?" the spirit asked before Guybrush could put a sentence together. "I've brought you some food and water." And he had--suspended in the spirit's thin substance was a small loaf of bread and a cup. He accepted both gratefully, only too glad for an excuse to sit down for a while. The Daemon anticipated this, gathered up the blanket, and draped it around him.

"How long have I been down here?" he asked, once he had moistened his throat enough to get the words out.

"Less than a day, sir," the voodoo creature responded.

"Where are we?"

"Still just off Plunder." When Guybrush blinked at him in surprise, he amended, "Captain Marley-Threepwood's crew is having difficulty deciding exactly where Monkey Island is."

"You mean the song doesn't call them in?"

"They all hear the song, but it seems to come from different directions, sir. The result: we're not going anywhere."

"I don't know if you even _can_ sail directly to Monkey Island," Guybrush admitted. "Every time I've gotten there, it's been through something arcane."

That gave him an idea. "Can you carry anything larger than just this?" He raised the ceramic cup in indication.

"Oh, easily, sir. I can carry human beings, if you so desire."

"Good. Then first, I need you to find a few things for me, including the keys to the hold." He recited off the list from long memory. "And second, I want you to find out where Chari is."

* * *

The Daemon was gone an hour, leaving Guybrush to pace out his nerves and boredom in the hold, which was far from quiet even at this time of night. Judging by the stomping and shouts coming from above, Elaine had her crew hard at work, even if they were getting nowhere. Finally, though, he felt the familiar disturbance in the air which signaled the Daemon's approach. 

"Everything's ready, sir," he said upon materializing. "I figured you would want to add the final ingredient yourself."

"Did anyone see you?" Guybrush asked.

"The galley is completely empty, sir. It looks like no one has been down there in weeks."

He nodded in satisfaction. "And Chari?"

The Daemon spread himself out into the familiar screen, showing a dark pile of rocks. In their midst was Chariset, asleep--probably hidden well-enough in the darkness, but in daylight her hiding place would be no such thing. And judging by the look of the sky, it was not long before dawn.

The picture changed focus, showed a wider area--and now the skeletal soldiers in the area were clearly visible. They couldn't find her yet, but it was only a matter of time. Guybrush felt a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach--when the sun was up high enough, they would be able to see and catch her.

"Daemon, did you say you could carry human beings?"

"Yes, sir."

"All right, then...there's been a change in plans. Hide your work in the galley, then go get Chari and bring her back here. Hurry."

The spirit vanished with a dramatic wisp of smoke.

* * *

  
Chariset was running through darkness and darker mud, slipping and sliding, fighting for every step. Behind was a great and horrible _something_ with claws and humid breath. It moved easily through the mud, while she did not.

She slipped, skidded, nearly lost her balance but planted a foot, spun, and ran on. A cliff dropped from beneath her feet--she gathered herself and leaped out into mid-air--

Landing unexpectedly in a clump of nettles that stung as she ran. The monster had jumped as well and the trees were everywhere by the time she finally had enough space to turn and look at the thing.

"Yarrr!!" screamed LeChuck, stone and larger than life. She gasped and swerved out of the way, trying to hide in the gray mist. Soft black anthills impeded her movements. The zombie approached, flanked by Horace and Largo, just as the monster whomped into view, shaking the ground. With puppylike abandon, he snatched up Horace, wriggled around Largo, then darted around and around LeChuck. He was huge, he was....he _was_ a puppy! Tongue logging, tail whipping his playfulness, he barked twice, darted forward, snatched up the stone zombie, tossed him with a flip of his head, caught him, repeat. In seconds the trio simply vanished.

Puppy-breath in her face, he dodged back and forth in front of her, wanting to play. She tried to tell him he was too big, but then he caught her up in his jaws. Prickle of puppy-teeth on her shoulder-she gasped and then-

Chariset opened her eyes. The warmth at her back was still there. So was the light touch on her uppermost arm. She turned her head to see black claws and red feathers. Elijah whistled a good-morning.

She gently shooed him away from his warm perch so she could pinpoint the source of the other sensation.

Deep breathing. Lying on the hastily constructed straw mattress next to her was a sleeping form. Guybrush. To her great surprise, his face was beginning to show just the suggestion of a line or two around the eye and brow, and there were bags under his eyes sleep had yet to erase. Elijah fluttered down from a small wooden peg in the wall and settled on his shoulder, combing a loose strand of hair back with gentle precision. She sighed. It was a bittersweet moment, this first sight of her brother in close to a year, especially in what was clearly a prison room. There was not a door to be seen, and she'd have bet her remaining boot that the overhead hatch was locked. Of course, that's what the Daemon showed you, she berated herself.

The Mailer-Daemon himself was the familiar curl of smoke in the corner of the room--she slipped out of the makeshift bed, tucked the blanket closer around Guybrush, and walked over.

"Can you run a few errands for me?" she asked after a brief exchange of greetings and thank-you's, once she learned that he had rescued her. "Breakfast...for one, and I need some new clothing." She glanced significantly at her bare feet, noting that her wounded calf had been carefully bound up. "I can tell you where to find my closet in the Sea Cucumber--I have a spare pair of boots there, and some other items. Also..." she paused "..I want you to see whether you can get the Necromancer's Amulet for me."

He did something close to a bow, then vanished. She sat down upon the side of the 'bed,' stroked Elijah's back-feathers, and waited.

Two arms closed on her from behind. She gasped, even as a familiar voice said in her ear, "Hey, sis. Long time no see."

* * *

  
It took them well over an hour to catch up over a breakfast delivered by the Daemon. He had also brought in a number of other items, some more practical than others. "I'm glad for the chamber pot," Chariset commented. "But why two pieces of cloth, or more water? You _are_ planning an escape, right?"

"Of course," said Guybrush, waving a small cloth pouch by its tie-strings. She caught sight of the gray powder within and smiled slightly.

"But no Amulet."

"I cannot carry that item, madam," the Mailer-Daemon had said. "It nullifies magic, and I _am_ magic."

"We'll just have to wing it from here on."

She glanced significantly at the gray pouch. "I take that to mean you want to attack Monkey Island itself?" It wasn't really a question. "We're not prepared to do this, Guybrush. We aren't even armed. When we attacked LeChuck, at least we had the Amulet and the Mask of Medusa--but LeChuck's powers are probably next to nothing compared to this Big Whoop."

"I have a hunch....not much more than a feeling...that we're a threat to his power just by being here," Guybrush confessed after a moment of thought. "And besides, you don't have to actually touch the Amulet to use it, right?"

"If it's close enough."

"Your Amulet was what closed Big Whoop the first time," Guybrush pointed out. "Of course he's going to want it brought to his stronghold to destroy it--which he will--but he won't do it right away. He'll want to play with it first.."

She nodded. "Typical evil villain. And hopefully I'll have time to use it first. But what are _you_ going to use?"

He chuckled at some secret joke. "I've come to Monkey Island..what, three times? Maybe four. I only came armed _once_, and when I did, I....."

_You died_. "I get the picture," she cut in.

"My point is, it looks like the only way to survive there, at least for me, is to go unarmed. It's crazy, but it works."

"You do seem to have an instinct for that place," Chariset finally admitted. "All right, you fight it your way, I'll fight it mine."

"Either way, Big Whoop has to be destroyed."

"Agreed."

"But first we have to get out of here..."

* * *

  
A few minutes later.....

Chaos reigned. "I'm over here!" called Guybrush from one side of the deck.

"He's loose!" With pounding footsteps, half the crew gave chase--but he slipped through their hands.

"Yoohoo!" He waved cheerfully from the port rail.

"Now we've got--Ooof!"

"Hey! Watch it!"

"Ha! Nice try, folks!"

More footsteps as the crew ran the other direction, thuds as men dropped from the masts.

"Stop playing around and grab him!" shouted Elaine.

"We can't get ahold of him!"

Something piratey and obscene.

"This way, fellas!"

"He's headed for the galley! Get him!"

The Mailer-Daemon, in the guise of a certain pirate, was running around on deck, luring all the entranced pirates into the kitchen area. Once there, he had only to toss in the little gray bag of gunpowder and then, hopefully, the Threepwood pair (and parrot) could make good their escape.

Tauntingly, from above: "Not even close!" Sounds of skidding feet, followed by a muted crash. More obscenity.

"He does a better me than I do," the real Guybrush groused. Chariset only grinned at him, probably wishing, like he did, that they dared watch the show. "How will we know when it's--?"

_BOOM_. The _Seahorse_ rocked under the impact of a small explosion. Seconds later the Daemon floated down to where they were seated against the wall, on the mattress, holding wet pieces of cloth in their hands.

"I guess that answers your question," he put in, just as the first few wisps of acrid smoke drifted into the hold. Chari coughed and choked, covering her mouth and nose with the cloth.

"Hold your breath," he advised, taking in a deep lungful himself through his own improvised gas mask. She imitated him, drawing in almost as much air as he did, to his mild surprise. He had well-developed lungs, but it sometimes took a while to fill them completely. Then he squeezed his eyes shut against the stinging smoke, leaned his head against the wall, and waited.

He knew to the second how long his air could last--ten minutes and 3 seconds--and so he also had a fair idea of how long a minute 'felt.' He tried to take his mind off the situation; holding his breath this long wasn't exactly what he would call _fun._ The air burned more and more the longer he held it--it stopped being comfortable at the four or five minute mark--but better than the alternative.

Motion on his left side at about the seventh minute...Chari had run out of air. Had it not been for the fact that his head was starting to spin, he would have been more impressed at this new-found ability. She leaned forward, breathing hard through the piece of wet cloth as she tried to recover from the oxygen deprivation. He opened an eye, saw that the smoke was finally starting to dissipate, gritted his teeth, and waited for it to be over.

At exactly the ten minute and four second mark, he doubled over, expelling all the breath in a rush, and dragged in a huge lungful of air and thin smoke. _That_ was a mistake--between the sudden flood of oxygen and the magic smoke, he felt dizzier than ever. The world began to fade out into shades of gray...

"Guybrush! Wake up! We're there."

_Huh_? _What was_ _he_..._oh, right.._

He shook himself and got up. With the help of the Daemon, both of them got up to the top of the deck and looked around. Elijah came out under his own power, and perched on her shoulder. They gave near-unison whistles of surprise.

The deck was strewn with unconscious pirates. It looked like some terrible massacre had taken place, especially in the kitchen where the smoke had been thickest. Guybrush, who had been on the receiving end of that spell twice now, did not envy them.

"What do we do with all of them?" wondered Guybrush.

"We drop them into the cell," Chari replied. "They'll just follow us otherwise..."

It took a long time, but with the help of the Daemon, every single crewman was deposited in the hold, with plenty of food and water (neither of the duo were barbarians). Guybrush dealt with Elaine himself, lifting her limp form and placing her gently on the bed in the Captain's cabin. He tossed the limp green parrot in after her with far less ceremony, wedged the door closed, then locked the hatch and dropped the keys overboard.

"Now....how do we get to shore?" asked the practical Chariset.

"Rowboat?"

"There are none."

"Swim for it?"

"Sharks."

"The Daemon."

"That would work."

Guybrush scanned the deck. "But not nearly as much fun as...."

She followed his gaze. "A cannon??"

"Never traveled by cannon before?"

"Um...no."

"Then," said he with an unholy gleam in his eye, "it's time you try."


	6. Confrontation

The Song of Monkey Island

Chapter 5: Confrontation

* * *

Deep beneath Monkey Island, Big Whoop's Throne Room....   


Picture, if you will, a nearly-circular dark cave with a vaulted ceiling so high that it vanishes into the blackness. Give this room flat, black floors and only one entrance--a long narrow tunnel. Imagine that a channel of magma runs down this tunnel, leaving any non-lava beasts to walk carefully along its edges. Imagine also that the channel is too wide to step or jump across, and too hot to make this a wise idea.

Follow the channel to the exact center of the room, where it opens into a pool of magma which is exactly circular. The channel continues to the far side of this cave, where it vanishes. The room is thus divided exactly in two.

In the very center of this round pool, (the only source of light in the whole room), is a large stone structure shaped exactly like a beast writhing in pain in the pool of molten rock. Its only decorations are the bones of perhaps two human beings, set in careful patterns in the rock, ribs upright and displayed around the edges like feathers, four intact and desperate hands clutching at air from the sides, four feet seeming to kick for freedom. The skulls are side by side on a smaller clump of stone which serves as a footrest, for this, as you have probably already figured out, is Big Whoop's throne.

The throne swivels in the lava, and the massive occupant of this horrid structure leans back, kicks his 'feet' out of the rock, and plunks them down onto the faces of the unlucky skulls, who try not to groan too loudly. For these skeletons are all that remain of the unhappy Horace and Largo, rewarded for their faithful service with this honored position. No one is closer to their master. Still alive, the two former henchmen have nothing to hope for but oblivion...or possibly revenge. But neither will come if their terrible master has his way.

* * *

Big Whoop leaned back and steepled his fingers, pleased indeed with the news from his two simulacrum-spies. The two Captains he controlled--Murray and this Elaine, both near and dear to the Threepwood pair--were well on their way. Elaine's ship was right off the coast, in fact, though his agent reported some delay in disembarking. He hadn't been more specific than that, which had Big Whoop both slightly amused and slightly worried. He'd actually expected some trouble from this Guybrush character in his years of long-dealing with him through LeChuck, but Big Whoop was anxiously awaiting the moment he could confront the man directly, instead of tiresomely working through intermediaries. He was even tired of Singing in his enthralled workers and soldiers. _Patience_, he told himself. _They'll bring this Guybrush ashore_ _soon, and then you can have your revenge_. Lava curled upward in what might have been a smile. Such a pity the Threepwood sister wouldn't be here to see it, though when she herself was brought in, she would see the evidence... That alone might be enough amusement, for a while...

"Revenge and more revenge," he said aloud. "Such an old, sweet story...I tire of it."

With admirable timing, the green parrot came flying in, just above the channel of lava. Underlit with golden light and headed directly towards him, she was a near-heraldic figure of a bird, worthy of some nobler cause--Big Whoop spent the few seconds she took to alight on his throne arm toying with the notion of taking a human body and making himself a king, the parrot as his design. But parrots don't sing, nor do they scheme and plot. A parrot was an unlikely symbol of what his reign would be like. Maybe all the better to adopt it...

The bird cut his musing short with her first few words, spoken at a scream. "He's gone! He made a potion, knocked out the whole ship, locked the crew in the hold, and now he's _gone_! He didn't even take a rowboat! He just vanished!"

There was no mistaking who the 'he' was. "_What_??!?" Big Whoop began to rise from his throne, blazing with green fire and looking like murder personified. The green parrot backed away as well as her little claws could manage--she was Little Whoop and a part of his substance, but that still wouldn't keep him from destroying her parrot body. "Then you'd better _find_ him, and quickly. He can't be too far away."

"B-but Big Whoop... we don't know when he left. He could be anywhere between here and Plunder Island," the bird pointed out, cowering.

"He'll be here..." growled the magma monster. "He knows I'm the one he wants to deal with. But if you don't find him soon...." he left the thought hanging. Little Whoop would have swallowed hard, if parrot anatomy allowed for this. Big Whoop was closer to him than a parent figure...they were the same being...but if Little Whoop even appeared to stand between Big Whoop and his revenge, he would kill the parrot-body _and_ Little Whoop without a second thought. He had never been so afraid.

He was so afraid that his claws had locked onto the bony armrest of the throne. Even as he carefully loosened them, another messenger appeared, this one a human man. But he was clearly either possessed by another Little Whoop or undead, since he walked directly down the center of the lava channel without harm. He bowed and reported. "The _Sea Cucumber_ and Captain Murray have arrived, sir."

Undead, then. Little Whoops never said 'sir.'

"Excellent," beamed Big Whoop. "Do they have any prisoners, by any chance?"

The man looked confused. "No, sir. Should there be?"

Big Whoop scowled, a gathering storm on his face. "There _should_ be a woman on board," he began slowly, hinting. Little Whoop had never seen himself show so much forbearance.

"Oh! You mean Captain Threepwood!" The man brightened considerably. "She's not on board anymore."

"And just where might she be?" continued the lava-creature with chilling calm.

"Captain Murray threw her overboard...sir." The little man remembered his manners as Big Whoop's face clouded even more. "He said that you could have her dead, but not alive."

Little Whoop anxiously scanned the molten lava's features, but read nothing but minor disappointment. Big Whoops shrugged philosophically. "The skeletons will bring her back here eventually," he said at last. "And we've still got one Threepwood to play with. You may go." He dismissed the man with a flick of his 'hand.' Little Whoop was astounded that he had gotten away with his life...er....undeath.

"And as for you, my little feathered self, go out there and find him. I don't have to tell you what will happen if you fail."

Little Whoop knew better than to waste time in blubbering. He bowed once, picked up his tail neatly, and leaped into flight.

Two seconds later, a flying bullet of lava struck him in the back feathers. With a desperate _squaaak_, he plummeted into the lava, transforming instantly into a skeleton bird, wings upright and feet apart. The magma around him hardened into a rough shield shape.

Big Whoop sent his new crest to the top of his throne with half a thought, most of his attention on a lighted circle of magma on the other side of his seat--invisible from the bird's perspective. In it, a man and a woman were descending ropes to the bottom of a narrow canyon. A perfect trap. Big Whoop stirred the lava around the image, smiling thoughtfully at what other evil tricks he could pull before lunching on the soul of the dim-witted crewman and adding his skeleton to his decor.

"Go out and take over five or six monkeys," he ordered idly to the lava, out of which six Little Whoops instantly sprang, scrambling to obey. They vanished out of the cavern, sparks dancing behind them for a few seconds, until even those tiny motes of light were gone.

* * *

Daemon and Chariset were next to their tiny fire as Guybrush returned from his brief forage session. "Found some bananas," he announced.

Silence.

"Found out Big Whoop's hiding place and saved Elaine."

Chari, head bent over a sheet of paper, didn't respond.

"I know the Secret of Monkey Island."

"That's nice, Guybrush."

"Oh, and LeChuck says hi."

"Hmmm.."

"Murray says he doesn't want to see you any more."

"_What_??!?"

He grinned.

"You ought to be butchered," growled Chari, returning to her perusing.

"I know." He was completely unrepentant. "What is this you're looking at, anyway?"

"It's a copy of that memo you sent me. The sheet music for the song Elaine was hearing."

_Okayyyy_.... "Why?"

"I have this feeling that this song is the key to Big Whoop's power. If there was some way we could make a counter-song, maybe we could reverse it. But I don't know the exact notes, and I can't read music well enough to sing a counter-song, even if I could write one."

"Why don't you just talk to Mike L. Sand?"

"Who?"

"He writes all the music for this sort of thing. Maybe he could even write it for you."

"I suppose it's worth a try. Daemon, do you know where to find this Mike Sand?"

The Daemon roused from his coil by the fire. "Mr. Mike L. Sand? He's seldom in his office, madam, but I'm sure I can track him down."

"Thank you. Would you please ask him for a reverse-melody of the Song of Calling? Call it the...Song of Awakening."

"And a small piano," added Guybrush.

At the Daemon's look of dismay, Chari hastily added, "All we need right now is the music."

"If madam wishes, I can merely learn the song myself and repeat it for you."

"That would be perfect," she replied with what sounded like heartfelt gratitude. Elijah rustled his feathers from the other side of the fire and whistled for attention.

The Daemon vanished. Guybrush stood up and called to Elijah, who was only too happy for someone to pay attention to him. Parrot on his arm, he scouted the floor of the canyon.

The sun was setting on the surface of the island, but this canyon was set deep enough that only a few red rays touched its walls. On the floor, where he and Chari were camping, it was dim twilight.

Elijah swooped upon a large, brightly-colored rock. "Pretty."

Guybrush bent down to look at it. "Yes, it's nice."

Elijah clearly wanted to keep the rock. Guybrush refused. The parrot sulked. He seized the rock in his impressive clawed feet and flew a few yards before it slipped out. Undaunted, he dove after it and repeated the performance. The third time, Guybrush took pity on him and carried it himself.

Elijah went after another rock. The mighty pirate tried not to sigh at the childishness of Chari's new pet bird.

"What's all this?" asked Elijah's mistress, when he finally returned to their campsite with a double-handful of bright pebbles.

"Rocks. And there's more where these came from."

"And....why?" It was hard to see her features, but she looked amused. "I know you have your collections, but I've never seen you solve a puzzle with rocks."

"Ask that idiot bird of yours--they're his." Elijah looked hurt, perched on the pile with his wings spread protectively over his treasures. "Pretty..." he said, looking beseechingly at Guybrush, as though he expected him to snatch them all away again.

Chariset _was_ amused...in fact, she was close to laughing. "Then I'm sure he has his reasons, Guybrush."

"He does. '_Pretty_.'" He tried not to roll his eyes. Chari tried not to laugh. Elijah tried to follow the conversation.

"Come 'ere, Bird," she coaxed, balancing him gently on her right hand and scratching his head feathers. His cascade of tail feathers trailed almost into the dirt--he really was a very striking parrot. He tucked his head into her shoulder, rolling one anxious eye at Guybrush.

"I know you're just tense about tomorrow," she began, comforting Elijah. "But _he_ doesn't even know what's going on, half the time." The red bird chose that moment to shake out his crest feathers in what looked a little like an emphatic 'no.' "Let him have his pretty pebbles, Guybrush. At least for tonight."

Elijah continued to gaze at him fearfully. Guybrush relented, fished out a piece of cracker, and held it out to the parrot, careful to go nowhere near the 'pretty' pebbles. "Peace offering."

The bird reached for it, hesitated, then looked to Chari as if for permission. "You can stop the theatrics now," she advised in a whisper. Elijah seized the cracker (and nearly the fingers holding it) with joyful abandon, then launched himself into flight down the canyon floor. "Come! Come! More pretty."

Guybrush _did_ sigh. Chari laughed gently at him.

"You're right, he's my bird." She held up a hand to forestall any comments from her brother. "I'll go take care of it. Wait here for the Daemon."

* * *

"Oook! Oook! Cheep!"

The monkeys were awake at midnight, even if the two tired adventurers weren't.

"Well, we are now," commented Guybrush.

"I always had been," responded Chariset, humming the little counter-tune the Daemon had brought back. The Daemon himself was once again asleep.

Rustling on the canyon walls. "Hey, Guybrush?"

"Yes?"

"Isn't that about where our ropes are?"

They both bolted for the walls, stumbling around in the darkness. Chariset tried to summon power from the Amulet, creating a blue flame which she set on Elijah. In the darkness, the fiery-blue parrot was quite impressive.

"Scout, Elijah!"

The glowing bird shrilled angrily at a gang of monkeys, who not only had discovered the two ropes leading down into the canyon but were playing with them. As Elijah swooped at them, they turned and fled, taking the ropes with them.

"The ropes!" Guybrush called. "Get the ropes!"

Elijah flew off in hot pursuit as the monkeys, chittering in excitement, scampered away, rope in paw. Two or three angry _Bwwwaaaaaak_!!'s later, he was out of earshot.

The moon chose that moment to come back out, revealing two Threepwoods stranded at the bottom of a canyon.

Chariset said the first thing that came to mind: "How embarrassing!"

"Well, I guess they don't call it Monkey Island for nothing," added her brother. It was her turn to be annoyed and his to be amused.

But the irritation didn't last long. "If this is the worst that happens to us, we'll be okay. We can find a way out in the morning."

He hugged her, on impulse. "I think you and I are good for anything."

"I hope so...I really do."

They walked back to their campsite. "Can you sleep?"

"No. Can you?"

"Not re--ally." Guybrush sounded like something had caught his attention in mid-word.

"What? What is it?"

"There's...smoke in the air. Look." He pointed--a thick cloud of black was rising to obscure the moon. The ground was shaking slightly, and a faint hissing sound was rising from--

"Great jumping Necromancer!" Chariset leaped to her feet as a thick yellow....thing poured over the lip of the fall wall and onto the canyon floor. It was yellow, it was glowing, it was...

"It's lava!" The molten stream was pouring right at them, steaming and smoking, filling up the far end of the canyon and creeping towards them. And they had no way to get out!

Chariset fled to the far wall. Sheer rock. No way to climb it. The glowing tide crept even closer.

"He's just toying with us now!" yelled Guybrush angrily.

"Toying or not, if we don't get out of here, we're going to be _dead_!"

Guybrush scooped up a handful of Elijah's pretties and began tossing them at the lava in sheer frustration.

"Stop wasting your time!" yelled Chariset in panic. "Rocks aren't going to stop it!!" He ignored her and kept throwing.

The Mailer-Daemon--their one hope of escape--awakened. She was on the verge of grabbing her brother by the collar and shoving him into the spirit's substance in sheer desperation (if not jumping in herself), when she noticed that the lava was slowing. As Guybrush threw another rock at it, the substance seemed to 'see' it coming and part around it, so that the rock landed on bare soil.

"I thought so," said Guybrush grimly. "This isn't real lava."

"Whatever it is, it doesn't want to mix with normal stones," Chariset realized, staring.

"So it won't cross them." Guybrush leaped forward and spread the remaining rocks across the floor of the canyon, making a protective barrier. There weren't enough to leave no spaces at all, but it would take a long time for the lava to seep between them. While Guybrush remained on the canyon floor, hurling one or two remaining rocks, Chariset and the Daemon rose to the surface. By the time he had fetched both of them out, it was near dawn, and Elijah had rejoined them. All four looked tired.

"We can't afford a rest," Chariset finally said reluctantly. "If we go into the trees, the monkeys will find us, and if we stay down here, the lava will trap us."

"Then we go on." Guybrush sounded just as weary. "We should be able to make it to the Monkey Head by morning."

The Daemon moved as if to follow, but they both stopped him. "Not you," said Chariset, even as Guybrush added, "You've been looking tired ever since the _Seahorse_. We don't need you to help us take a walk. Go rest. We'll call you when we need you."

Off they walked, into the darkness.

* * *

"Banana?"

"Oh, no thank you. I've seen more than enough of those things."

"Papaya?"

Chari regarded the dull gray-green-orange fruit doubtfully. "You go first."

"Elijah?"

"I don't--hey! We're not eating my parrot, Guybrush."

"Beggars can't be choosers, Monkey Woman."

"We can when it comes to my bird. And just because we're living in a tree does _not_ make us monkeys."

He persisted. "Papaya or banana?"

"Do you have any mango?"

"I'll check." Guybrush descended to a lower branch of the gigantic oak tree they were sharing for the time being. It was on the windward side of the central mountain, and he had no clue how it had arrived in the first place (or why he hadn't noticed it before), but apparently it was a place foreign enough that the local monkeys shunned it. Chariset, who had seen oaks in America, liked it. Guybrush had his doubts.

What was more, it stood alone--anything coming after them was clearly visible from their vantage point. The branches were wide enough that it was possible to sleep comfortably on them, which they had for the remainder of the night. Not the most comfortable of beds, but they needed to rest and eat before they would be up to storming the Monkey Head and confronting Big Whoop.

He rummaged through his sack of plundered fruit, found a rare breadfruit, and carried it farther up the trunk to Chari's branch. Once again, he was glad he had no fear of heights. The Daemon was above them both, and Elijah was a self-appointed sentinel at the very top. He saw Guybrush, whistled happily, and flew down to join him.

"Pretty bird," greeted the mighty pirate, wincing a little as Elijah landed on his head. "Nice birdie."

Elijah bent his head down and looked him almost directly in the eyes--the upside-down parrot face was rather amusing. "Hewwoo."

"Going up?"

"_Bwaaaaaack_." The mighty parrot leaned over too far, lost his balance, and somersaulted, beak over feet. Only a quick catch from Guybrush saved him. Elijah, now on his back feathers, tail dangling, feet in the air, looked something close to foolish.

"I won't tell anyone."

"_Bwaaaak_?"

"Bwaaaak."

Guybrush righted the parrot, then handed him the breadfruit. "Take this up to Chari. I want to have a quick look around." Elijah seized the soft flesh of the fruit in his claws and made his way up with labored wingbeats. Guybrush headed in the opposite direction.

On the outermost tip of the strongest branch, Guybrush stopped and looked around. The tree was in the center of its own clearing, as though native vegetation didn't want to come too close to the foreign oak. The place was curiously deserted, which made it an ideal place to spend the night, but Guybrush was used to seeing the jungle filled with birds and animals, and the silence made him uneasy.

A slip, scramble, and two small thuds later, Chari had landed on the branch behind him. Elijah on her shoulder _sqwaaaack_ed a protest and spread his wings for balance.

"Guybrush, you need to have a look at this." She pointed out towards the two-thirds of their field of vision the trunk had been obscuring; the two-thirds that showed the island coastline. Large swaths of disturbance were creeping through the trees, sending monkeys and birds scattering in all directions or taking noisy flight (yes, even the monkeys). Some trees were bursting into flames. Here and there, a tongue of yellow lava could be seen.

"Our old friend, Big Whoop." Smoke was rising all along the coastline now--did he mean to destroy the entire island just to get them?

She just nodded. "Herding us towards the Monkey Head. Should we accept his 'invitation' or just show up at his doorstep?"

"That depends on whether the Daemon is up for it. He looks worn-out lately."

"I'll be fine, sir," said the cultured voice of the spirit behind them, sounding much like an English butler. "But I won't be good for much afterward."

"After this, we can send you home," reassured Chari. "The voodoo lady can't have that much work for you to do. You've served us well....take a vacation."

"After this, young madam, I won't even have the strength to fly home." Guybrush must have looked as surprised as Chari, because the spirit chuckled. "You needn't worry about me, sir. My kind live to serve humans--most happily."

"Most?"

The spirit coughed politely. "Well, sir, there are always exceptions."

"I hope I never meet one," commented Chariset.

"Same here, madam. Some of them can be quite unpleasant."

"Are you ready?" Guybrush asked.

"Yes." The Daemon.

"No." From Chariset.

He looked at her. She squared her shoulders and clarified. "I think we both know that we're _not_ ready for this."

"But who could be?"

"Exactly." She gave him a look that was half-sad and half-determined--for an instant, he was so proud of his little sis that he almost wanted to cry.

"So onward once again into incredible danger?" he finished instead.

"Knowing we may never come out?"

"Going right back into the same trap we escaped before?"

"But having _no_ idea whom we're up against now?"

"Not to mention facing our own loved-ones turned against us?"

"And-" she took a deep breath, then gave him an impish smile "-loving it."

* * *

  
Guybrush appeared just in front of the entrance to Big Whoop's domain and blinked in surprise. The Monkey Head was completely gone. Instead, a gaping tunnel rose up out of the ground, descending deep into Monkey Island. Beyond the entrance, it appeared completely unlighted. It was also unguarded. Clearly they were meant to walk right in.

Chariset appeared--one or two feet off the ground--looked surprised at the unexpected drop, landed off-balance, and fell onto her knees. She picked herself up, brushing the dust off her trousers, and gazed upon the large cave without comment.

It was black. Darker than the darkest mouth. If they went in, _would_ they come out again? Or would it swallow them whole and leave no trace that they ever existed? Guybrush had walked into a mouth that resembled one more strongly than this one before, but there was no doubt that this one scared him more. Chariset remembered a midnight trip to confront a powerful sorcerer through a gate as black as this one. She had balked at the door--now she balked at this one.

"There's nowhere to go but inside," she murmured to herself. Elijah, making a neat landing on her shoulder (he had come across the island under his own power) leaned against her ear and crooned. She held up her hand and called the blue fire to it--it came so readily that she knew the Amulet must be close. Probably inside the cave.

That settled it. Hand in hand, she and Guybrush walked down into the darkness.

* * *

  
A cold wind sighed past them as they walked on, inside hands linked, outside hands trailing on the edges of the walls, feeling their way along with their feet. It was pitch-black--had the light from outside not still been visible above them, Chari would have panicked and bolted for the exit. Ahead of them was Elijah, feathers aglow, spying out the way for them. She was tensed to drop Guybrush's hand and draw her sword at the slightest sign of motion from ahead, but there was none, nothing at all.

They could have walked for hours, or minutes, or days--time had no meaning down here. Neither of them spoke. The Mailer-Daemon was a pale, hovering shape at their back. Elijah was a glowing shape up ahead. The cold wind continued to whistle past them, into the depths of the mountain.

In a slightly rough voice, Guybrush said "Chari, look!"

A dim yellow light had crept up without her noticing. Before them was the bottom of the cave, which was just as narrow as the tunnel down, and divided by a thin thread of lava. It separated the Threepwood sibs, since the combination of narrow tunnel and red-hot central barrier shunted them both to either side of the passage. Chariset remembered the old 'divide and conquer' methodology and felt nervous, since their party was effectively cut in half now--she and Elijah on one hand, Guybrush and the Daemon on the other.

The passage opened slightly, and they entered what could only be Big Whoop's throne room. The floor was black, but a large pool of lava in the center provided some light. What was more, skeletons stood around the edges of the room, converted into unwilling candelabras. In the center of the pool was a giant throne, and in the center of _that_ was-

"Why hello there. I wasn't expecting you so soon, but please do come in. Make yourselves comfortable." His tone was polite, almost pleasant, which contradicted with the eloquent promise of the being's own monstrous self. The creature they had come to destroy was nothing more than lava with a personality.

"Big Whoop," Chariset and Guybrush whispered in unison, gazing on the gigantic creature before them. Guybrush paled. Chariset felt her heart run out like water. Their eyes met across the channel of molten rock between them, and she knew they were thinking the same thing: _We're dead_. A lava monster has no weaknesses. The ground beneath their feet trembled with his latent power. They were nothing more than annoying bugs to be squished under his super-heated feet. 

But Elijah, unimpressed, bristled on her shoulder and shrilled defiance at Big Whoop, glaring at something just above his throne. The skeleton of a parrot.

The utter fearlessness of her bird made Chariset feel slightly ashamed of herself--she drew her sword, called the flames close to hand (though still invisible) and addressed the monster. "Mr. Whoop. We've come some distance to see you."

"One mustn't be so indirect, Ms. Threepwood. I understand that you're far more interested in my associates." He sang, a single note that made the cavern shake and set the candle flames dancing. From either side of his throne--standing in the lava itself--two human figures stepped out and faced the intruders. "Meet my staff. I believe you're already acquainted with Captain Murray and, of course, the lovely Governor Elaine."

Murray stepped out of the lava and faced her on the black bank, looking exactly the way he had on the deck of the Sea Cucumber, so long ago. Chariset swallowed and took a few steps forward, involuntarily. Her feelings toward Murray were so tangled that she scarcely knew how to feel--and now, thanks to Big Whoop's machinations, she had to sort them out in a strange place with her life in danger.

Big Whoop ceased his note, and Murray relaxed and shook himself slightly. "Chari!" he cried joyfully.

Was he real? He looked real... She came forward another few steps, hesitantly, doubtfully.

He raced toward her, not pausing an instant, clearly meaning to catch her up in his arms. "Chari! You're alive!" With enough emotion to make something catch in her throat, he added, "I thought I'd killed you.."

"Oh, Murray.." she whispered, leaping forward to meet him halfway, all doubts aside, almost ashamed of how much she wanted to touch him again.

Big Whoop sang again, a single note, and Murray stopped short. Eyes dead and cold, he regarded her dispassionately, while she almost skidded to a halt, surprised, frustrated, and completely balked by his lack of reaction. Big Whoop dropped the note--Murray came to life--then the song resumed and he stood as lifeless as a skeleton before her.

"You see?" said the lava-creature unnecessarily. "He is mine. They are both mine." Across the room, Guybrush stood similarly baffled before a statue-Elaine.

Then Big Whoop looked at her chillingly. "As are you."

Before she could even react, he began to sing again--the Song of Calling--and her will and mind were mostly swept away before she realized what was happening. She dropped to her knees, surrounded in blue flame, fighting to preserve her one little scrap of personality. The Song ate away at her soul, and she gasped in pain but held on.

"Chari!"

"She belongs to me," thundered Big Whoop. "Everyone who passes through me belongs to me." To her he boomed, "You had no right to escape alive. You had no right to go into me and _hurt_ me. I own your _soul_. And I am going to take it back!"

The blue flames wavered, dimmed, flickered. She gritted her teeth and fought harder.

"Let her go! I'm the one you want!" The voice was Guybrush's.

"But isn't this how it always happens, Guybrush?" Big Whoop mocked. "When it really counts, you're always left alone. Isn't that how it was when you defeated LeChuck? Come on....tell me that you don't secretly want it this way."

"I don't. And you'll never have her," snarled Guybrush.

She was down to last-ditch effort now. The voices seemed to be coming through dimly, like a conversation in a memory of a dream.

Her vision was blurring, but something glinted at the edge of her range of sight--the Necromancer's Amulet. Her one chance to escape...

"Oh, but I will. Soon I will have all of you...all that there are. Only then will I be satisfied."

"Guybrush..." She had to fight to get the words out. "The Amulet. Murray's holding it. Get me the Amulet."

But Guybrush was stranded on the other side of the pool of lava. He cursed in helpless frustration. Big Whoop laughed. Elijah shrilled in anger on her shoulder. As if in a sudden rush of air, the flames were extinguished, and Chariset was left holding off the Song with the last little bit of her strength.

Then, like a gift from Heaven, something dropped over her head and onto her shoulders. The Amulet. It came to life of its own will, flooding with white-hot energy, and burning a fiery answer back to Big Whoop.

_No_.

The Daemon fell to the ground beside her, a wraith that twisted in agony. "For you...madam.." he managed weakly, and vanished.

With a cry of inarticulate rage mixed with grief, Chariset sprang to her feet, blazing with flames of all colors. Elijah shrilled, both wings flung out behind him. "No," she growled at Big Whoop. "You are mine."

She threw back her head and launched into the opening notes of the Song of Awakening.


	7. The Secret of Monkey Island

The Song of Monkey Island

Chapter Six: The Secret of Monkey Island

* * *

At the first note of the Song, Big Whoop shrieked. The ground trembled. Chariset's face was a perfect blank as she advanced on him, singing all the way. She was holding a sword composed of blue fire, concentration evident in every line of her body. The lava monster retreated a pace or two, snarling his rage, but he was clearly unsure how to respond. He bellowed, causing the cavern to tremble and shake. A dull rumbling underlay all.

Guybrush quickly backstepped to the far side of the cavern, next to Elaine, who had come to life and now clutched his arm, pale with anxiety. He had no idea how much she knew of the past few months, but the cavern was a scene to terrify anyone right now. The floor and ceiling were shaking in earnest now, and pieces of rock cascaded down from above. One by one, the lights went out as skeletons toppled over and fell to the ground, leaving them in increasing darkness. Now only the combatants could be seen clearly--Big Whoop surrounded by gold light and Chari haloed in bluish-white.

He blocked two more pieces of rock with his arm, took a glancing blow on his shoulder, staggered, and pulled them back into the shelter of an overhang. More rock fell past them as he held her close, watching the fight.

Elaine shivered, her eyes dark pin-points in a white face. "Guybrush, what's happening?"

"No time to explain. We've got to get out of here."

She was made of sterner stuff than that. "No. We need to help...somehow."

Still more of the ceiling fell past them. Her courage completely won him over (all over again), but there was nothing she could do. All he wanted was to know that she was safe. "Elaine, run for the exit. Get out of here. Chari and I will come out later."

"I'm not leaving you, Guybrush," she insisted, though her hands were white and cold.

"You can't do anything here. Run."

She pulled herself together and gave him the look that even LeChuck didn't dare ignore. "Guybrush Threepwood. You're not any more prepared for this than I am. If you're staying, I'm staying."

At that instant, the rock around the entrance finally shook loose and cascaded down, mostly blocking the exit. "We're both staying," he declared, cautiously inching forward.

No more projectiles fell from the ceiling, but both Chari and Big Whoop were singing now. The Songs had taken the form of visible winds, blue and red, battering against one another, howling around the cavern. A wisp of red brushed Elaine, and she shuddered--Guybrush quickly placed himself between her and Big Whoop.

"Chariset!" he called.

She looked up, unable to break off singing. The red wind flowed at her, but she raised the blue sword and parted it in two. Murray, sitting dazed on the ground, stiffened, but she sidestepped to stand between him and the monster, just as Guybrush was guarding Elaine. She lost her note, faltered, found it again, and pressed forward. Big Whoop redoubled his efforts, trying to force her back. For an instant they stood still, stalemated.

Murray, standing behind her, suddenly broke into song--in perfect harmony with her melody line. Elaine gasped. Guybrush was no musical judge--Chariset might have been a virtuoso soprano or tone-deaf, for all he knew, ( thought he thought she had a nice voice)--but not even Elaine's sea-chanties were as lovely as the duet that ensued between Chari and Murray. His tenor, her soprano, the Song of Awakening, all combined to create a flood of bluish-green light that poured out towards Big Whoop. As for Chari, if she was surprised at her love's vocal abilities, she didn't show it, but she linked her free hand with Murray and sang out stronger than before. Big Whoop howled but now was clearly losing the battle.

Another forward step. At the very edge of the pool of lava, Chariset walked forward fearlessly. The instant her foot touched the magma, it hardened into an oblong block of rock. Crackling sounds echoed sharply on the walls as streamers of rock spread out into the pool, like fast-forming ice. Murray joined her on their island of rock--they stepped forward as one. Another rock-shape, connected to the first, appeared. Two smaller pieces of the pool also solidified, cutting down on Big Whoop's running space.

Forward, and again. Sharp sounds, gunshots reverberated. The blue-green wind swept across the surface of the pool. Spurs jutted out into the side-channels, sealing them off.

They stood at the throne now. She and Murray flanked it, one hand on each armrest. Big Whoop snarled in helpless rage as Chari raised her sword in her hands, point downward, and drove it into the rock. The hilt remained visible, but now the blue glow encircled the throne, scouring it, breaking it down into sand. Two skeletons lay on the newly-formed rock, skeletons in pieces. No, there were three...one was a bird.

She recovered her sword and pointed it at the bones. "Be what you were meant to be," she chanted, still on the melody line. Murray picked up the phrase, in harmony. "Be what you were meant to be."

Green-blue smoke hissed, coiled, surrounded the bones in large masses. They dwindled into human-sized figures, hesitated, lifted-

-and revealed two astonished men and one overjoyed green parrot. Largo. Horace. Polly. Guybrush and Elaine shrank back involuntarily from the sight of the bird. Chariset didn't appear to even see them.

The two men ran to the other side of the room, cowering against the walls. They never even looked at their savioress, but Chari still stood between them and their master, guarding them from the red wind. Polly took flight, shrieking. Elijah, who had been perched on Chari's shoulder for the entire battle, launched himself into the air as well, flying circles around her, glowing a little from the light of her song. "Be what you were meant to be," he _sqwaaack_ed. "Be what you were meant to be," echoed back the song.

"Be what you were meant to be," Guybrush whispered. "Be what you were meant to be," replied Elaine. Strange yellow light danced at the edges of his vision, flowing--it could only be from them--past them and toward Big Whoop, who now stood revealed in a shrinking circle of red. "Be what you were meant to be," chirped Polly and Elijah, and the song responded. A sibilant chorus resounded in the cavern. "Be what you were meant to be."

All chose the exact same moment to step forward, closing the ring tighter around Big Whoop. Blue and green, yellow-gold, purple from above, all-enclosing, a deadly rainbow. Eyes hard, Chariset stood less than ten feet from the lava creature, who twisted away. He hurled lava-drops at her, but she held up her hand and they stopped at the edge of his sphere of crimson light and fell.

"Be what you were meant to be," she sang, twisting the words into a curse.

"Stop...please. Have mercy," begged the demon-creature.

"What mercy did you show us, fiend?" Her tone was rough and cold. "You lived by the sword, now die by the sword."

She raised the blue flame above her head and drove it into the creature's 'chest' with all her strength, using both hands. He screamed with enough volume that Guybrush clapped his hands to his ears. Polly and Elijah scattered to either side of the room, Murray and Elaine winced and covered their own ears. Chari stood like a stone, but her teeth were obviously clenched tight against the sound.

The lava-monster stiffened, solidified, then slid beneath the surface of the stone without a splash. The millisecond he went under, the scream cut itself off, and lava slid over the hole where he had vanished with a wet slurp. Instantly, it froze into stone. Breathing hard, Chariset and Murray faced Elaine and Guybrush across the lip of a depressed circle of dead black rock. Overhead, the two parrots still circled, creating the only real light in the room--a dim purplish light which cast odd shadows over everyone's faces.

The hilt of the blue sword burned dimly, flickered, and faded as the Amulet's power slowly died away. Chariset, completely spent, sagged on her feet. Murray put an arm around her.

"We did it," she managed hoarsely, looking at Guybrush.

"No, you did it," he said, stepping off the ledge to embrace her, Elaine on his arm. Horace and Largo were dim shapes just beyond them, creeping cautiously closer to the light. Elijah whistled a warning as he touched gently down on Chari's arm. Polly did likewise, landing on Elaine.

The red parrot leaned in, rubbing beaks with his green counterpart. "Polly. Sister," he explained.

"Then she'll have to live with us from now on," said Elaine. Elijah looked to his mistress, leaning on Murray, who nodded. He uttered one squeal of joy and both of the parrots 'went out,' leaving them in utter darkness.

They stood in total silence for perhaps a minute. Then Chariset, slowly, quietly, began to laugh.

It spread. Guybrush and Elaine leaned on one another and laughed until tears came to their eyes--Murray whooped shamelessly somewhere in the darkness--the parrots cackled with their own form of hilarity. Even Horace and Largo were rolling on the stone floor. It was one step short of hysterics, this release of tension, but they all needed it--and indulged in it until most of them had to sit down.

It was also the kind of laughing fit that takes a long time to die out...they would recover, then move or try to say something and set each other off again.

Elaine finally recovered, wiping tears from her eyes (Guybrush knew this only because he was sitting next to her). "So..um...anybody got a light?"

More snickers from the darkness. "I think Chari does, right s--?"

He spoke too soon.

The ground opened beneath them, and out sprang a monstrosity of mixed molten and hardened rock, bursting up so quickly that he flung the members of the party outward in all directions. They flew into the walls, sliding down to land in bruised heaps, or hitting the ceiling, or rolling helplessly across the floor. But as the creature whirled about in a tossing sea of molten rock, his eyes searched out two of the humans, fingers flinging out tiny arcs of lava. They flew like darts in two directions, snapping into the rock around the limbs of two figures in mid-slide down the rock face.

Guybrush and Chariset, pinned to the walls on either side of the reformed lava-pool, struggled for wits and air. Elaine, Murray, the two former henchmen, and two parrots lay in pitiful heaps all around the room, but they were of secondary interest. Big Whoop actually climbed up out of the pool and marched toward Guybrush, his enormous back hiding all sight of Chari.

"Count yourself fortunate," he snarled at the trapped pirate. "I have decided to spare you."

With a single mighty shove, the creature pushed into the section of rock on which he hung, spinning it completely around. The manacles released, dropping him onto a black circle of solid rock. The wall vanished. All around him was a sea of glowing red magma.

* * *

  
Chariset hung on the rock face, wind completely knocked out of her, head spinning. She fought for a full breath of air as the monster crept towards her.

"Don't even think about begging for mercy," he began.

"Oh don't worry," she managed to croak. "I wasn't going to."

He burned with white-hot rage. "I should kill you right now. You defied me. You deserve to die."

She struggled for enough breath to sing. "Then do it. What are you waiting for?" The Amulet's power was creeping up, slowly. All she had to do was buy time.

"I should. Maybe I will." She continued to regard him with flat eyes. "But I have something else in mind for you. Something for the whole family."

Something about his tone..or his wording....she felt a chill for the first time since gazing on the entrance to Big Whoop's lair. He laughed, satisfied, and gave her slab of rock a shove. She dropped--

--into a large box of some kind. A lid fell into place over the top, and a sudden rush of cold air made her shiver.

She was in a rectangular cage made of solid ice.

Big Whoop appeared before her, magically untouched by the frigid air. She pressed into the bars of the cage and jerked back in surprise at how cold they were. Already she was shivering, and her breath steamed.

"Welcome to your new home," he said grandly. "I hope you'll like it here."

"You can't p-p-possibly intend to keep me here," she snarled.

"And why not?"

"Isn't it obvious?"

"Why...no. No it's not. Why don't you tell me?"

She would just show him. With all her will, she invoked the Amulet....and nothing happened. Not a whisper of power.

"Oh, did I forget to mention that your little toy won't work here?" grinned Big Whoop ingenuously. She drew a breath to sing and nearly coughed most of it out--the air was _cold_. " And don't even bother trying to sing your way out. Conditions _really_ aren't good for that."

"And how do you mean to keep me in a cage with such flimsy bars?" She whirled and kicked at the thin pieces of ice, shattering them with a satisfying crash.

But at that same instant, she was stricken with a wave of cold that snatched the breath from her body. She gasped, losing even more heat to the air, as her fingers and toes burned, then went numb. Her nose and face tingled.

"And one other thing," added the demon, grinning insufferably at the ice magically reformed. "Every time you break a bar, you lose more of your body temperature. No need to speed up the inevitable."

"So this is the plan," she growled thickly and indistinctly as her lips went numb. "You're going to freeze me to death."

"'Death' is such an ugly word. I'd prefer to say I'm sending you to join your ancestors. Oh, and don't mind that--" he added as the cage seemed to contract slightly. "All part of the procedure."

The bars continued to close in around her, slowly. "You do remember this part, don't you?" he continued. "You've seen it before."

"I don't know what you're talking about," she replied, though an insistent memory lingered just out of recall which insisted that she did.

"I believe I once put your brother through the same thing."

Guybrush--frozen into a block of ice.

_No. Anything but that_...

In mad panic, Chariset attacked the bars, hoping to smash them apart and flee--all but two held firm. She fled for the opening she had created, but her body was now numb to the neck and could not obey her. She fell clumsily to her knees, losing even more heat to the icy floor. The ceiling began to close in on her. Panting, she gave Big Whoop her best glare, but her vision was failing. The air was icy agony in her lungs. One more time she struggled to get to her feet and fight.

Then she was surrounded by comfortable warmth. All was peace and rest. The ice-floor was her bed, calling to her. A strange voice warned her that this was wrong, that she shouldn't listen, but she was so tired...

The darkness seduced her consciousness away, out of the cold, into paradise...   


Big Whoop left her where she lay, after arranging her arms properly over her chest. She was even smiling a little when the ice finally engulfed her.

* * *

  
He stood on the edge of the black disk, feeling trapped and lost. Molten rock bubbled around the edges--not real lava--real lava would have incinerated him long ago. He had yet to even break a sweat. Even so, as a prison, it was effective. He had never wanted to pace so badly in his life.

"Well? Aren't you coming?"

Guybrush spun around on one foot and saw Big Whoop standing in the sea of magma. Beside him, a long path wound in serpentine curves across the roiling surface, leading ultimately into a deep opening in the cliff wall.

_Where did that wall come from? _ "Forget it. I'm not following you in there."

"Have it your way." The black circle bobbed and tilted slightly under his weight, threatening to sink. "If you want to stay here and fry, that's your business. I just thought _maybe_ you'd like to hear what I have to say."

"And why is that?" Guybrush was in no mood to listen to this guy.

"Because I understand that you've spent most of your life searching for something. Your parents. Your identity. Who you are..." Big Whoop waited for a reaction, while Guybrush tried to suspend the strange hopeful interest which rose inside him. It must not have worked, because the monster's eyes lit up. "Ah, so you _do_ wonder. Come with me, and I will show you everything you always wanted to know."

"Not interested," Guybrush lied.

"Oh? Are you equally disinterested in all secrets? Even perhaps the Secret of Monkey Island?"

He lost his pretense of apathy. "You know the Secret?"

He chuckled, very softly. "I _created_ the Secret."

"The Secret is in there?"

"Not precisely. But only there can I tell it to you."

Guybrush felt skeptical. "How very convenient for you. Nothing doing."

The creature seemed to sigh. "Look, this is my domain. I control everything here. If I wanted you dead, all I would have to do is tip that piece of rock you're standing on. Are you really in that much more danger there than here?"

The pirate didn't answer.

He did sigh. "You have my word as a creature of magic that you will leave the cave alive and in good health. But this is my last offer. Will you come with me, now, and finally have some answers, or will you stay out here and die ignorant?"

"You gave your word," Guybrush reminded him, stepping gingerly onto the path. It held firm. Within the cave opening ahead, a thin blue light was shining.

"Ah...you may have wondered," began Big Whoop conversationally as they wound back and forth along the path, "why there seems to be a curse on the Threepwood name. Why your family seems unusually lucky yet tends to have many enemies. Why you always seem to be off on adventures."

Guybrush _had_ wondered that, actually.

At the opening in the rock face, Big Whoop climbed out of the lava river and walked along beside him. "Well, it all goes back a long ways, to the very first Threepwood, actually." His voice echoed off the walls of the cave as they walked in, headed towards the light. "He was young, but resourceful--like you--and he eventually married a beautiful woman and settled down to live happily ever after."

The source of the blue light was a small opened door, just large enough to admit Big Whoop. They were very close to it now, as the monster continued his story.

"He also had a voodoo spirit to assist him, much like your friend, the Mailer-Daemon. Without his help, the first Threepwood would have died several times over, but this spirit was loyal and helpful, and he never complained, even when his master nearly killed him through overwork."

Into the door, into a room of unbelievable crystalline beauty.

It was a room of ice, filled with crystals cut like diamonds, sparkling and shining in a way he had never seen before. His breath caught, and he would have stopped to stare, but Big Whoop was already leading him on. "You haven't seen anything yet."

A single black-stone path lay through the garden of rock-ice, along which Big Whoop threaded. "The spirit fled his harsh master at last, coming here. He came to a remote island called Monkey Island and made his home down here, deep in the bowels of the island." They passed under a crystal arch through a shining wall into yet another room. "And when he had enough power, the spirit returned to his former master--and brought him here."

Directly in Guybrush's line of sight was an ice-crystal cut like a coffin, with a faceted top. And inside rested the body of a tall man with red hair, frozen inside.

His delight turned to horror. He leaped back, recoiled into a solid wall which instinct told him was once the door. "What is this?" he demanded of Big Whoop.

The monster only laughed. "This? Why this is the Secret of Monkey Island, Guybrush!" Rank upon rank of crystal coffins stood in the large room, arranged in semi-circles. "Do you see my little collection, gathered up all these centuries? Do you know who they are?"

Row after row of cold, dead faces, trapped for all time in beautiful coffins.

But there, in the front row.....was that--?

"Every Threepwood who ever lived--man, woman, and child--is here," thundered the spirit. "Including your parents."

"Mom? Dad??" Guybrush shoved past Big Whoop and peered deeply into the faces of a man and a woman in the front rank. Tears fell unnoticed down his face as he realized that his parents were here...had been here all these years..captives of the monster. "I thought you abandoned me.." he whispered.

"They came here as soon as they could leave you and your sister by yourselves. They were going to destroy me....ha ha. Now the circle is complete. You have come to destroy me as well..."

"You were the spirit," said Guybrush, comprehending.

"I was. And the day your first ancestor drove me away, I put a curse on the Threepwood name! I vowed that I would have my revenge on every man, woman, or child to bear that name. And I have. I have. Look at them, Guybrush. I have your entire family. I have your entire history, here....buried in Monkey Island where no one will ever find them."

With a hard lump in his throat, Guybrush stared at his parents, remembering their hands, their voices, their smiles. He had never known they were adventurers.

He locked gazes with the monster, eyes glittering with hatred. "I swear to God, Big Whoop, I will find a way to destroy you, once and for all."

"What, like you destroyed LeChuck?" laughed Big Whoop. "He was mine, too."

"What?"

"Didn't you know? From the moment you and Chariset were old enough to oppose me, I was there. I took and trained a younger Threepwood, an uncle of yours who thirsted for power, and when he was strong enough, I set him against you."

"LeChuck was my uncle?"

"Yes. But even though he was your relative, he was my creature the entire time. For I have always been your worst enemy."

"But why?"

He looked hatefully pensive (a hard thing to imagine). "Because we are bound to one another. Your family, my curse, is my only reason for living. I cannot rest until I have all of you, all that there are. Only then will I be satisfied."

"You will _never_ be satisfied."

"On the contrary. Only two Threepwoods are left to oppose me. I have you now, and I have plans for the other."

"What are you going to do to Chari??"

"'Going to do'?" Then the monster laughed, heartlessly. "Turn around, Threepwood. Turn around and see your beautiful sister."

And then he knew. The world dropped out from under his feet as he _knew_ what he would find when he turned around. "No." He denied the truth. It couldn't be. It wasn't. He would turn around, and it would not be-

-but it was. The cold and the blue light turned her hair and lips to black and her skin to blue, but the woman in her glass coffin was none other than his sister. Chariset Threepwood. The latest victim of the curse. Around her neck, mocking him, was the Necromancer's Amulet.

Guybrush stared, frozen. But shock gave way to rage--he screamed something without words and slammed both fists into the ice crystal that held her imprisoned. It held solid, though his hands throbbed from the blow. "You're lying," he half-shrieked at the crystal, but Big Whoop answered from behind him. "I can never lie."

Guybrush fought the crystal with hands, feet, teeth, fingernails--and couldn't scratch it. "Let her out."

"I know of nothing that undoes this ice."

"You lie."

"I can never lie."

"Then you tell me--is she dead?"

"She is with her ancestors."

"Damn you, monster! Tell me!"

"You know all you need to know."

In mingled rage and frustration, Guybrush tore himself away from his sister's side and flung himself into the air directly at Big Whoop, meaning to tear him to pieces or die trying.

Big Whoop stood immobile, making no attempt to block the attack.

Three feet away.

Two feet.

one.

Two inches away from magma skin, Guybrush stopped dead. It was as though the air had turned to water and solidified around him--he was suspended in mid-leap.

"My second greatest regret is that I am unable to break my word," snarled Big Whoop, regarding him. "But I promised you should leave this place, and so you shall. So hear me. I banish you to the ends of the Caribbean. You shall not return to Monkey Island. If you do, I will shatter every block here, starting with _hers_. You will have your chance at revenge only on the bodies of your entire family." Big Whoop smiled thinly. "I do not think even you are that obsessed."

And then Guybrush, unknowingly, asked the question which was to break his heart completely. "What about Elaine?"

"Ah, yes...Elaine." An slow mist gathered into a bank, which lighted and displayed an image--his red-haired wife, wandering slowly and painfully in the dark cavern, searching for him. "You remember I said there was another Threepwood to deal with beside your sister?"

"You--you're not going to turn her to ice too...." He fought the air, but it held fast.

"Actually, no. For you see, I was not referring to Elaine..."

He waited.

"Your young wife Elaine is two months pregnant. With your daughter."

"I'm a father?" Guybrush struggled for thought against an overwhelming emotional tide of rage, grief, despair, and joy.

"Theoretically, perhaps. But you and your little girl won't have much time with one another." The image swirled, reformed into a tall girl of perhaps seventeen, with long black hair and piercing blue eyes which resembled Chari's too much for comfort. "For you see, she will be born here. _I_ will be her father. I will raise her, and teach her all she will need to know about the outside."

He choked. "No...you can't..."

"I will teach her to _hate_ the father who abandoned her here. And I will name her 'Odia.' Do you know what that means?"

"No! I won't let you do this to my daughter!"

"I will name her 'Hatred.' Because she will hate you more than anything in her life. She will hate you more than she ever would have loved you."

"You can't do this! It'll _never_ work!"

"And, when she is old enough, I will send her after you. She will track you down with all of my hatred in her heart. What a sweet reunion that will be. The last of the Threepwoods will murder the second-to-last...and all out of love to me. And then I can rest."

Guybrush was all but incoherent. "You...you curse! All the pain I've ever known in my life has been from you, all along! You destroy all the happiness I've ever known!"

"And what about me, you rotten brat?" Big Whoop cut in. "Your family is the curse on _my_ demonic soul! You don't think I _tried_ to escape you?" He spit fire at the rows of ice coffins. "You brought this on yourselves!" he shrieked at them. "You get what you deserve! And don't you ever forget it! You _earned_ this!!"

Guybrush's eyes opened wide in sudden realization. _'We are bound to one another'....of course!_

"Now, as for you...."

He had one chance to end this.

"Big Whoop! Wait! I need to tell you something before I go."

The demon looked sour but relented. "You have three seconds, _Threepwood_. What do you have to say?"

For an eyeblink and a half, Guybrush gazed on the image of his future daughter._ This is for you_, he thought.

"Big Whoop, I di--"

* * *

The air opened under him and the world went black and gray. He was lost-and falling-

-and he landed on his stomach on something gritty.

"--ismiss you." The words rang hollow and empty in the still air. The black sand beach beneath him was deserted. The sky was clear and hot, streaked with clouds. No sound but the echoes of his lost, defeated voice over the listless waves.

In the dead calm, another voice laughed, "Feast on defeat, Threepwood. I have your Elaine. I have your sister. Now, I have your daughter. And _you_ will have a long, long lifetime to think about what you have lost."

Then the laughter came, cruel and mocking.

* * *

In the dead of the night, the air was rent with a wailing cry that was not a shriek and not quite a howl, a sound so full of desolation that even the animals who heard it cowered shivering to the ground. Again and again it sounded, for as long as the sufferer had voice, then gave way to sobs, then silent tears. It was the sound of Ultimate Suffering, as S.S. Morgenstern so accurately described the horrible sense of agonizing emptiness and loss felt by the lone mourner, last of the Threepwoods, the latest and most horribly scarred victim of Big Whoop's curse.

He cried alone in the depths of the jungle and wanted only to die. But he was cursed with life, and death would not come for him, not for an eternity of dark and lonely nights, no matter how devoutly he might pray for it.

* * *

In the dead of the night, a shade of a woman opened her eyes on a forest which was blacker than death itself. She stepped out unsteadily on ghost feet, walking among a crowd of men and women among the trees, her blue gaze puzzled and lost. Where was she? What was she doing here?

Who had she been?

Why was she here and not at rest? She had always been told that the dead slept. Who was keeping her awake?

Two shades approached her. She could see that they were a man and a woman. Why did they look so sad to see her?

They touched her and she recoiled at the flood of memories which streamed through their substance and into theirs. Images of a brown-haired girl with a blond brother. Why did the image of the brother fill her with such sadness?

Who are you? she asked.

:_We are your family_.:

Why am I here?

:_You are our family_.:

_I am a Threepwood_, she realized. _I am Chariset Threepwood_.

_And I am dead_.

_Because of Big Whoop's curse, I am dead_.

_Yet I live_.

_Yet I am dead_.

She wanted to flee the horror of the moment. _Let it be a dream_. _Let me still be alive_. _I'll break out of the cage this time_._ I'll sing the Song_. _I'll use the Amulet_. _Just let me live_.

Mother, Father, tell me I can go back. Tell me I can make it right again.

:_No, child_. _For us, there is no more going back_.:

Then what can I do? Where can I go?

:_Wait, dear child_. _All we can do it wait_.:

For what?

:_For the end._:

No. I refuse to believe it.

:_Dear one, you will learn_. _Our story is over_. _The tale belongs to others now_.:

As long as Guybrush is out there, I will _not_ learn. It can't end this way!

:_My child, perhaps for Guybrush it will not end this way_. _But for you, it has_. _It has_.:

She fell into their comforting arms and cried without tears--the only weeping a spirit can do. But whether she cried for the story, for her family, for her brother, or for her own lost possibilities, she could not say. The tale which started so brightly with Murray had turned into a tragedy, with no way to set it right. For this most of all, she cried.   


_Finis_....but not forever


End file.
